F1 is like running a hospital, and other insights from Alpine Sporting Director Julian Rouse

At the United States Grand Prix SB Nation sat down with Julian Rouse, Alpine’s Sporting Director, to get his perspective on F1

It’s race day in Austin, and in the Alpine hospitality space, Harrison Ford is staring me right in the eyes.

Not the actual actor of course, but rather an image of Ford in one of his iconic roles, that of Indiana Jones. Ahead of the United States Grand Prix Alpine announced a collaboration with Bethesda Softworks and the minds behind the upcoming “Indiana Jones and the Great Circle,” a video game that allows you to step into the role of the legendary archeologist as he spans the globe in a new adventure.

That activation is one of many aspects of life in Formula 1 that Julian Rouse, the team’s Sporting Director, needs to balance throughout a race weekend. In this role Rouse handles communication with the FIA regarding regulations, oversees the pit crew and handles their performance, and works to help the work/life balance at Alpine.

But as I was speaking with Rouse ahead of the United States Grand Prix, I could not help but notice Ford’s eyes staring at me, from over Rouse’s shoulder as we talked. I asked him about how difficult it is to balance everything an F1 team deals with, referencing the Indiana Jones activation. That’s when Rouse compared an F1 team to something beyond my wildest imagination.

A hospital.

“For me, involved at a senior level in the organization of the whole company, in a way one of the most similar sort of industries probably is, hospitals and the medical industry, where you’ve got so many subparts and they’re all so different, but they’re all working towards the same thing,” began Rouse.

“You don’t always necessarily need each other. But also, you’ve got certain overarching, either governance or objectives that will dictate the journey for each department and, in the same way in a hospital where, well, you want to save lives.

“You know, if you put money into heart disease, it doesn’t benefit the cancer treatment area, but they’re all working towards the same thing to improve the metrics of that area, to work to the same budget.

“They have to collaborate, but they don’t always necessarily lead each other on a day-to-day basis. And then you’ve got so many small subparts in that.

“A big racing team, like in Formula One, is similar to that in that respect where you’ve got so many small subparts that are all working to the same end goal, but not necessarily always needing to be crossing paths,” described Rouse. “The marketing department and the aerodynamic department is a classic example of that where you’re working alongside each other all of the time, you’re trying to facilitate things to achieve the same goal, but not always necessarily on the same page.”

Rouse then outlined how the new cost cap regulations have created a challenge for teams to make all the pieces of the “jigsaw puzzle” fit together.

“One of the big things as well that’s really compounded that is the cost cap,” said Rouse. “Before, you know, cost gap came in if you were a big team, you could sort of easily mitigate some of those challenges just by spending more money. Whereas now, you’ve got clear choices to make, and going back to that hospital where you’ve got to pull one resource from somewhere and put it in something else.

“But putting it somewhere else might have an indirect benefit, but it’s not clear what the direct benefit might be for the other departments or the organization, and that you know, that jigsaw puzzle, and those pieces are very challenging to sort of fit together. Which is another fascinating complexity to the to the sport and and and and the business side of things as well.”

F1: A sport and a technological puzzle

Another fascinating complexity to Formula 1? The fact that it is as much a race to be won as it is an engineering problem to be solved. F1 contains a vast array of rules, regulations, and technical directives, and every few years the sport simply shakes up the board and starts anew, as it will in 2026 when a fresh set of technical regulations goes into effect.

In Rouse’s role as Alpine’s Sporting Director, it is his job to liaise between the team and the sport’s governing body, the FIA. That includes handling and overseeing what happens throughout a race weekend.

“There’s a lot going on in the background with all of that sort of stuff. It looks like a reasonably steady ship most of the time, but I can assure you it’s not,” described Rouse.

For example, a huge point of discussion in Austin was the “front bib adjuster” on Red Bull’s RB20, a component that dominated the conversation ahead of the United States Grand Prix. Rouse outlined how situations like Red Bull’s front bib outline how there is constant communication between the teams and the FIA regarding the technical regulations.

“There was a change technical directive change this weekend for something that Red Bull were doing on what they call the front tray, because they were just pushing the limits of the rules,” said Rouse.

“I don’t think they technically broke the rules, but they found a loophole that was sort of probably a bit unsporting. And so [the FIA has] restricted it. And they’ve worked through a process to alleviate the problem and make it more of a fair playing field again.

“And that was quite a big, big topic in the press this week that’s an ongoing thing all day on many different items.”

Rouse then outlined how F1 is both a sport and a massive technological platform for innovation. A platform where manufacturers can push the limits of what is technologically possible, while teams stretch the “grey areas” of what is allowed under the rules.

“It’s still a sport, but it’s a huge technological platform, and trying to marry together the progressive thinking that you have and love, with what you need in a sporting environment, and putting that together with the very sort of binary, process driven environment you need from a technological point of view, they don’t really go hand in hand,” began Rouse.

“They’re very sort of polar opposite ends of the spectrum, and quite honestly, a lot of the people that are involved in it are also, in terms of the way they think and the way they approach things, are quite often very different ends of the scale.

“And trying to bring all of that together is a big challenge.”

In Rouse’s view, the teams that are successful in F1 are the teams that can best strike the balance between freedom, creativity, and adhering to the appropriate technological processes that the rules require.

“I think the teams that are good are the ones that get that balance right and have the creativity and freedom within that, but are still adhering to all of the technological processes that you need in the automotive industry or the airline industry to make sure that everything is refined and robust as possible.

“Although we’re pushing the limits all the time, you still have a huge amount of quality and safety requirements to adhere to as well. We sometimes forget that we’re building a piece of equipment that goes 320 kilometers an hour, you know, just meters away from barriers.

“Balancing all of that is the big challenge. And when that works well and you complement the creativity with the robustness and the consistency, that’s when things really start to work for a team.”

The work/life balance in Formula 1

As the roundtable discussion wound down, Rouse talked about the difficulties in finding a work/life balance in Formula 1. With 24 race weekends throughout a current F1 season, tasking teams with crisscrossing the globe from Melbourne to Las Vegas and everywhere in between, it can be a grind.

This is why Rouses believes it is important to sometimes take a step back and realize what life in F1 provides.

“You thrive off the fulfillment that this provides. It’s also really important to remind people of all of the amazing life experiences that we’re doing along the way,” began Rouse. “It’s challenging, yes. But we go to some amazing places. We get to meet some amazing people, and you learn some amazing skills, and getting people to remain humble and recognize that on a regular basis, it sort of reenergizes people, and allows you to keep going, and then you become at peace also with the sacrifices that you make.

Rouse then outlined how he and Alpine put structures in place for the entire team, planning activities for the entire traveling organization, to give them opportunities for some incredible experiences while on the road.

“Yeah, we put a lot of structure for the people that are traveling. So, in Mexico, for example, on Thursday night we play football in Mexico City in the stadium itself, with [Visa Cash App RB F1 Team]. Pierre Gasly will come along. Yuki Tsunoda will play. Probably 30 people from our team will come.

“We hired a brand new padel court downtown, 30 of the staff went and did a tournament on Thursday night [in Austin].”

This week Alpine, and the rest of the F1 grid, is in Brazil for the final race of a triple-header that has brought the team from Austin to Mexico City, and finally to São Paulo. As you might expect, Rouse and ALpine have items on the agenda for this week as well.

“And then we go to Brazil and we go to one of the famous Ascari restaurants. The whole team will go and we’ll pay for the evening meal.

“So we’re trying to create some decompression, and taking advantage of specific cultural things in each country so that people feel like there’s a reason and a fulfilment to go that helps to drive that motivation as well.”

The challenges of an F1 Sprint Race week

Alpine and the rest of the F1 grid are back at it Friday, for the penultimate F1 Sprint Race of the season. The United States Grand Prix in Austin was another F1 Sprint Race weekend, and Rouse outlined how those weeks pose an extra layer of challenges for teams.

“It is a really big challenge because you just have less trial and error.

“So you always tend to see these race weekends with a sprint where it’s not uncommon to see sort of polar opposites from Friday to Saturday in qualifying, and also because some teams will typically be stronger on the harder compounds,” said Rouse.

“We have to qualify on the medium in the sprint, and that a tire that doesn’t suit us as well as the soft, for example.

“And so we knew we were always going to be stronger in the main qualifying when we have the freedom to run the soft compound compared to the sprint,” described Rouse in Austin.

“So it means the pendulum swings a lot more during these weekends, which is challenging for us.

“But, I think it’s really good for the fans. It makes it a lot more interesting, you know?”

The fans will get to see Alpine, and the rest of the grid, tackle those challenges this week in São Paulo.