Steven Grimm might be the most inappropriately named man in Formula One. The genial giant of the Red Bull Energy Station – mobile home to two F1 teams and the paddock oasis for hundreds of guests – is a man who likes nothing more than keeping people happy.
As the guy charged with ensuring the hard-working crews of Red Bull Racing and Scuderia Toro Rosso are kept fed and watered, that is, after all, his job.
“There are lots of little tricks,” he confides. “At the end of a long hot day, if you walk into the garage carrying a tray of ice-creams for the mechanics, you can make yourself pretty popular.”
That’s the easy bit. Much harder is the process of putting together the miracle of flat-pack engineering that is the Energy Station and ensuring that wherever in the world it may be, team and guests can roll in and find the same coffee machine, the same comfy loungers, the same Red Bull fridges, exactly where they always are.
“If you move the coffee station it can really throw people,” says Steven, 36. “You know how it is, when you’re tired and working under pressure anything out of place that makes you stop and think makes your day a little bit harder. So we try very hard to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
Steven hails from Berlin, so this weekend’s German Grand Prix at Hockenheim is a home event for him – not that location makes too much difference: “When you travel as much as we do, to be honest it doesn’t really matter where we are. The challenge is to provide the same service and make sure that the team and our guests feel as comfortable as they can.”
Keep up with Scuderia Toro Rosso and Red Bull Racing.
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