After the fanfare and excitement comes the rapid reality: a sporting season always starts with optimism but quickly descends into the realisation that only relentlessness and near-perfection can help reach those dreams and objectives which were spoken about in such positive tones only weeks earlier.
That goes for both individual and team sports and championships, but perhaps in motor racing it’s the most convoluted version of that: there’s the individual driver, but regularly two of them in a team. There’s then the team behind each driver and, increasingly, the team behind the team - support staff, garage staff, engineers, technicians and coordinators working on everything from car software to logistics, ensuring those on the grid can simply do what they do best.
