Patrick Harding was born in Leash, just outside of Dublin, Ireland, but now travels the world using his skills as a performance coach, physiotherapist, and mental development trainer in order to get the best out of his clients, such as the Williams’ Formula One superstar, Alex Albon. M&F caught up with Harding between races to find out how his career route led him to working with racers, and how his partnership with the man who became the first ever Thai driver to make an F1 podium finish when he placed third, is getting stronger all the time.
How did you find yourself becoming a performance coach for Alex Albon?
I’d been in professional sports for about 14 or 15 years. I had been working in Olympic sports, and at Arsenal Football Club as well, and moved from squad-based sports to working one-to-one with an Irish golfer and an Irish boxer. Working with individuals, I started to really enjoy the level of detail that I could get into; analyzing the gaps and putting plans in place physically and nutritionally, and from a behavioral point of view, so that we could bench mark what the best in the world were doing, and work towards that.
A contact I knew, from my days of gaining a Strength and Conditioning Master’s degree, connected me to motorsport. I started working in Formula 2 for a year (with racer, Tadasuke Makino, who moved on to Super Formula), and that was also when Alex was there. We kind of knew each other from the season and we sat and had a conversation about how we liked to work and what our personalities were, and what we felt like we needed from each other. Now we are in our seventh season together. The relationship has grown from strength to strength.
There is a lot of data that goes into racing, how important is body composition?
The way the regulations work, it’s actually a weight-making sport. (The minimum weight is 80 kilograms including helmet, race suit, and shoes). Anything above that, and you’re penalizing yourself, right? (If a driver is below 80 kilograms fully kitted, then the weight difference is corrected with a ballast). So, from our point of view, on the weight management side, (Alex) is about 78 kilograms, with kit. Alex is 6’ 1”, he’s probably one of the tallest drivers on the grid. This has it’s challenges both positionally, and ergonomically in the car. He’s super lean, super athletic, so that makes it easier.
F1 races can last 80 minutes and upwards. How much weight might a driver lose in that time?
I would say, on average, between a kilogram and a kilogram and a half. Then you’ll get specific races, like Singapore, or like Quatar last year, where it can be anything up to two and half, or three kilograms. So, it’s a significant shift in weight. With somebody like Alex, who is pretty lean, there’s not a lot of reserve there in terms of energy, so that’s why nutrition, for us, especially through those hot weekends is so important, as well as hydration, combining both of those together. It’s certainly something that we have to be mindful of.
Let’s start with hydration, how do you approach this?
We will calculate the amount of water that Alex is allowed, in the car, based on the overall weight of the driver and the car. Temperature conditions are important because what you don’t want to do is start adding tons of fluid, adding weight to the car, and then that fluid doesn’t get used and you’re just carrying around extra ballast. Typically, we allot for 200 milliliters. Then, in a particularly hot race we’ll do 750. We could do 1,000 mils. We’ll keep it really simple; it’s water and electrolytes, so we make sure he’s nutritionally fueled before the race, and that he has access to fluid on board. We are not trying to chase hydration during a race, because that’s a dangerous scenario to be in. We make sure that we have done all of the work beforehand.
In terms of that prep work, what health supplements are typically good for racers?
When you think about the amount of travel that Alex does, and his energy expenditure, we supplement for general health. So we supplement with a multivitamin including vitamin D, vitamin B complex, vitamin C and zinc. We’ll make sure he’s got a strong, healthy immune system but also that he’s getting a compliment of vitamins that he wouldn’t always get in his diet. We use probiotics, at times, to help support gut health. There are always options, in terms of the general health side.
In the pre-season, we spend some time trying to put some muscle-mass on Alex. So, good quality protein is really key for us in that period. If he is not getting enough from food then we can supplement with powders and protein-based snacks.
How does Alex’s nutrition differ in a race weekend compared to the pre-season?
During a race weekend, we focus a lot on nutrition but for a driver like Alex, who is so focussed on the race, sometimes food slips down the list of priorities (for him). In those circumstances, we’ll supplement with some carb and protein recovery shakes. From our point of view, supplements are a key part of our performance regime. Naturally, we would like to get all of what we need from good healthy foods, and that’s what we aim for, but we are also very conscious that there are high quality supplements out there that we can add to the schedule in order to help buffer those areas where we might not be hitting what we need to on certain occasions.
How does Alex approach nutrition generally?
He makes really good choices when it comes to food and he likes his food, and he likes good food. He will say he’s a good cook but he’s absolutely not (laughs). We have an incredible nutritionist who supports us from a distance with the plans. But the reality for somebody like Alex is that he has a huge energy demand across a race weekend. And even generally across those weeks in between races because we are training, and he’s traveling, then he’s got simulator work, his body is trying to recover, and I would say he’s close to an energy deficit most of the time just because it’s difficult for him to consume the volume of food that he needs.
So, on race weekend, if I see him dipping into the dessert section here and there, I have absolutely no issues with that. Sometimes we need those calories on board from an energy and recovery point of view. About 99% of the time he makes good choices. He likes sweet potato mash, stuff that’s easy to digest, some vegetables or a nice leafy salad with those good antioxidants in there. A good source of protein will be something like chicken, turkey, or some lean fish.
You mentioned that Alex is lean and muscular. Can you talk us through his strength and conditioning?
The neck is obviously a key component of the sport, and we spend a lot of time neck loading. His neck max’s are 78 kilograms plus, in side flexion (side bending) and extension, so he’s incredibly strong. Outside of that, two or three aerobic based sessions per week are really important for Alex, and any driver, because drivers endure 120, 130 bpm for anything up to 5 or 6 hours on a weekend in the car. We do Zone 1 work (55 – 65% HR max) either on a bike or running. Then we’ll intersperse that with some high heartrate HIIT work, bursts of anything from 30 seconds up to 2-minutes, and get his heart rate right up there. Maximizing the stroke volume with really nice oxygenated blood. If we buffer that oxidative capacity and we max that, then I know we’ve got a really strong aerobic base there.
Outside of that, the sessions Alex absolutely hates are the anaerobic sessions. He’s starting to build his tolerances with some lactic sessions (like short, heavy bursts on a bike). They are horrible. There’s no reason to say that they are not. But there are periods during a race when he is tapping into different energy systems and his heartrate will be at 170, 180 bpm, defending positions, overtaking cars, so he needs to be able to exist in that zone as well. How he executes these aerobic and anaerobic sessions tells me more about where he’s at from an overall, and general readiness point of view.
Singapore is coming up in September, so we’ve got sessions booked where we will get into a humidity chamber in order to recreate those conditions and will start to acclimatize Alex’s body before we even leave the UK. That’s the level of prep that we need to do to.
Having worked in F1 for several years, what impresses you most about Alex and other F1 drivers?
What impresses me the most is that these are athletes that have to exist on the broadest spectrums of physical fitness. In a weird way, they are very similar to boxers, in terms of needing a really good aerobic base, really good anaerobic base, and strength and power are key for success. But it’s also technical and tactical and I think what makes F1 a little bit different is the environmental conditions.
We talked about Singapore; we talked about Qatar. If you take Hungary, the track temperature was 140°F/ 60°C plus. And not only are they in the car for an hour and a half, driving at 190 mph/ 320 kph, enduring up to 6G corners, but they also have to react with precision. Then, they are constantly communicating with the engineers with information on tires, strategy, so that informed decisions can be made at the pit and in the factory in order to determine the success of the race. So, it’s the cognitive level, to be able to perform at that high execution rate while still withstanding those environmental conditions and physical load. It’s really, really impressive.
Patrick will support Alex when the F1 season continues with Round 15 in the Netherlands on August 23-25.
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