Formula One is a technology business, and at its heart the teams are in essence engineering companies which design, develop, manufacture and bring to market a  highly sophisticated product;  An F1 car that has more in common with an aircraft than the vehicle you and I drive to work each day.

The people and suppliers who work for these companies have to work together seamlessly, and all the time with their eyes fixed firmly on immoveable deadlines; the 20 Grands Prix events spread across the world from March through to November each year.  There is no point turning up on Monday morning with the best product in the world; the race starts every Sunday and if you haven’t kept pace with the continuous improvements required to compete, you quickly become an also-ran.

The collaborative approach required to produce and operate these F1 cars is astonishing, and a lesson to wider industry in terms of project management. Not only is the car to be produced on time, every time, with new regulations to meet and technologies to embrace every year, it has to be done with a critical emphasis on the fundamentals; safety and reliability.

For the team at the race track, the racing can only begin when the team of suppliers and the team of personnel back at headquarters have done their job over the course of many months. Once the race starts, the team work is more public than ever, and never more so than when the end user of the product – the F1 driver – comes into the pits for some ‘customer service’ two or three times in each race.  These days, with refuelling banned, the top teams aim to replace all four wheels and tyres, adjust the front and rear wings, and get the car back out onto the track in 3.5 seconds. Now that’s team work.

The steady move by Formula One into new territories, starting with Malaysia in 1999, has seen China, Bahrain, Abu Dhabi, Singapore and Korea join a series which, for the first time in its history, can really lay claim to being truly ‘global’.

What was different about this weekend’s Indian Grand Prix is that F1 already has significant Indian interest, so while the other new venues have sometimes seen poor audiences, little support from the indigenous population and a media unable to create many ‘local’ stories, this new race saw Indian drivers and an Indian team able to play a central role. Key, one would say, to helping to ensure a turn out of 95,000 spectators on race day and an estimated 180,000 for the weekend.  As journalist Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay wrote on website www.asiancorrespondent.com, India’s vast and growing middle classes appeared to like what they saw.

If neither Narain Karthikeyan in his HRT nor the Sahara Force India cars could promise an Indian victory, they went a long way towards giving Indian fans the sense of belonging in a sport where all too often the players, teams and show can seem irrelevant to all but the governments paying for F1 to grace their shores. Whilst there was disappointment that the popular Karun Chandhok did not get to race for Team Lotus, he did at least take part in practice, and the commitment of private enterprise within the sport was another reason for Indian pride to be boosted. Karthikeyan’s HRT displayed the branding of Indian automotive giant Tata, the combined power of VJ Mallya’s empire and that of the Sahara Group funds Force India, and most importantly Jaypee Sports International paid for the circuit and the event to be staged.  Jaypee built it, and the fans came.

All told, this was India at its best. Naturally, there were some shocked reactions from visitors unused to seeing the appalling poverty which can be witnessed in India.  Certain western media tried hard to claim that F1 had no right to visit the country. But this was a narrow view, and a double standard. If rampant poverty adjacent to F1 was a reason not to host an event, F1 wouldn’t race in Sao Paulo, and the Brazilian Grand Prix is regarded as one of the foundation events on the calendar.

The presence of Indian celebrities including Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan and tennis player Sania Mirza added the usual glamour to the event, but perhaps it was the role played by cricketing legend Sachin Tendulkar that topped the bill. He waved the chequered flag at the end of World Champion Sebastian Vettel’s lights-to-flag victory, reminding the world that when it comes to sport this is one country that knows how to create some magic.

Although the world of Formula One might appear narrow and highly specialised, the reality is that to be competitive in this most high technology of sports, with a global footprint and an emphasis on ‘delivery’ of every kind, Mark has gained a unique insight and ability to draw on lessons learned in this most competitive of arenas.

The commercialisation of Formula One as a global sport has lead to the competitors working harder than ever to secure successful, long term and growing customer relationships with sponsors forever being courted by other sports and marketing opportunities hungry for their dollars. Customer engagement has become a key ingredient for the most successful teams; understanding their needs, delivering the results Monday-Friday and not only on race weekends, and recognising that customer satisfaction is influenced by a wide range of behaviours throughout the organisation.

Excellence in execution is another key focus for Formula One teams, whether it be in designing, developing, building and proving an F1 car in readiness for the immoveable deadlines of 20 Grands Prix, or delivering a sub 4 second pit stop to a race leading driver who needs the ultimate in service in order to maintain his competitive advantage.

Within Risk Management there can be no better example of an industry which understands and has responded to a variety of risks than Formula One. Commercial risk, reputational risk, operational risk; these are faced every day by organisations around the world, and for Formula One teams it is no different. Add to that the Health & Safety risk inherent in producing a vehicle in which a human being will compete at speeds of over 200mph, and you have an environment awash with risk.

On May 1st 1994 Formula One witnessed the death of Ayrton Senna in the San Marino Grand Prix, 24 hours after another driver, Roland Ratzenberger, also lost his life. Overnight, Formula One changed its technologies, its culture and its priorities to ensure that such an eventuality would never reoccur. In the 17 years since, Formula One has seen no further driver fatalities, and contributed directly to road safety by seeing the self-same technologies and solutions applied to road cars under the Euro NCAP programme.

Wickens currently leads the WSR championship by two points from his Carlin Racing team mate Jean Eric Vergne, with the final weekend in Spain set to be a thrilling climax to the hotly fought title. The Toronto born driver has been nurtured to WSR success by Mark Gallagher and the Status Grand Prix team, for whom he scored their first victory in the A1 Grand Prix of South Africa in February 2008. It was later with Status that Wickens finished 2nd in the 2010 GP3 series, and was promoted to WSR in partnership with Marussia Motors, owners of the Marussia Virgin Racing F1 team. He is now MVR’s official reserve driver.

“Robert is a special talent,” says Mark, ” and the success he achieved for my team in A1GP continued in Formula 2 and GP3 last year. It has come as no surprise that he has been the best overall performer in WSR this season, but he faces stern opposition from Red Bull’s star driver Jean Eric Vergne. It is enormously satisfying to see Robert on the cusp of F1.”

“There is much to do this weekend because the competitive among these aspiring F1 drivers is intense,” says Mark Gallagher. “Alex has what it takes, but in front of the F1 teams gathered here for the final European F1 race of the season, the one thing you can be sure of is that everyone will be trying their hardest to prove themselves.”

Mark told Autosport.com ; “It has been a great privilege to run Cosworth’s F1 business for over two years and to work with such talented people. The company produces world class products, and that applies particularly to the CA F1 engine, which is truly competitive.

“Next year will be my 30th in professional motorsport and I have a number of ambitions for the future, hence my decision to move on. This will including helping my team, Status Grand Prix, and my partners Teddy Yip and David Kennedy to achieve their objective in GP3 and beyond.

“Meantime it has been very rewarding to play my part in Cosworth’s return to F1 as an engine supplier and I wish the company, its management and staff every success for the future.”