KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA - MARCH 28: Daniel Ricciardo of Australia and Infiniti Red Bull Racing's race engineer Simon Rennie works on the pit wall during qualifying for the Malaysia Formula One Grand Prix at Sepang Circuit on March 28, 2015 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. (Photo by Mark Thompson/Getty Images) // Getty Images / Red Bull Content Pool // SI201503280493 // Usage for editorial use only //
Simon Rennie was born on 29 April 1980, and made his name in Formula 1 not as a driver or a team principal but as a race engineer, the person whose voice a driver hears most during a grand prix weekend. His association with Daniel Ricciardo during the Australian’s most successful years at Red Bull Racing made him a recognised figure to fans who pay attention to the people behind the results.
The engineering path
Rennie came through the technical side of the sport, working within Renault’s Formula 1 operation before moving to Red Bull Racing. Race engineers occupy a specific and demanding role in a grand prix team: they manage the relationship between driver and car across a full race weekend, communicating strategy, tyre information, competitor positions and technical instructions while the driver is at speed. The quality of that relationship, and the trust built within it, often has a direct bearing on performance.
Red Bull
Red Bull Racing- Races (entries):419
- Wins:130
- Podiums:297
- World titles:6
- Poles:111
- Fastest laps:103
Data source: F1DB (GitHub)
At Red Bull, Rennie became part of an operation that was, through the early and mid 2010s, one of the most successful in the sport. Working within that environment required precision and adaptability, and his role grew as the team’s ambitions and resources expanded.
The Ricciardo partnership
Rennie became Daniel Ricciardo’s race engineer at Red Bull, and the partnership developed into one of the more visible driver-engineer relationships of the era. Ricciardo’s personality made him unusually engaging on team radio, and the communications between the two gave fans a genuine sense of how that relationship functioned under pressure. The engineer’s voice became familiar to anyone following Ricciardo closely.
MONTMELO, SPAIN - FEBRUARY 28: Daniel Ricciardo of Australia and Infiniti Red Bull Racing speaks with his race engineer Simon Rennie in the garage during day three of the final Formula One Winter Testing at Circuit de Catalunya on February 28, 2015 in Montmelo, Spain. (Photo by Dan Istitene/Getty Images) // Getty Images / Red Bull Content Pool // SI201503010109 // Usage for editorial use only //
Their time together at Red Bull covered some of Ricciardo’s best seasons, including his seven victories with the team between 2014 and 2018. The 2014 season was particularly striking, as Ricciardo outscored his teammate Max Verstappen’s predecessor Sebastian Vettel and announced himself as a genuine race winner and championship contender.
What race engineers represent
Rennie is a useful reminder that Formula 1 success depends on a large number of people whose names rarely appear in headlines. The race engineer is one of the closest professional relationships a driver has during a season, built on technical understanding, communication under pressure and the kind of mutual trust that takes time to develop and can be difficult to replace.
His career across Renault and Red Bull placed him inside two of the more significant operations in the sport’s recent history, and his work with Ricciardo gave him a small but genuine place in the public memory of that period.
