Who are the Formula 1 drivers’ managers, and what do they do?

With only 20 seats available on the grid competition is fierce. Since Formula 1’s inaugural race at Silverstone in 1950, just 776 drivers can lay claim to being an F1 grand prix driver.

With so few positions on the grid, competition is fierce so having the right person to get you that drive – and creating the right environment for you to flourish – is key.

The majority of today’s F1 drivers have a management team behind them, performing various roles to ensure they are free to focus on driving and being 100% focused on their performances for their respective teams.

Graeme Lowdon, the former CEO of the Virgin and Marussia Formula 1 teams, now runs Equals Management with former racing driver turned manager, Marc Hynes, and together they work with Lewis Hamilton and Zhou Guanyu.

Lowdon says that his approach to managing Zhou is to try and do all he can to ensure his driver is freed up to only concentrate on his F1 commitments.

“The approach we take is what we call a 360 approach,” he told Motorsport.com. “That means overseeing anything that can distract a driver from driving a race car, so logistics, contracts negotiations, sponsorship, physio, health and diet, tax structuring and so on.

“We can’t be experts on all of those so we work with trusted suppliers with those who have experience working in those areas because you can end up with a scenario where you have a driver who is under stress because of some business structure in his life and if you have no control of it, then it is detracting from performance.

“Whereas the whole idea of management is to create an environment where an athlete can perform.

“To a large extent Marc pioneered that with Lewis and we try to have the same approach with Zhou. Some drivers just have managers for a contract renewal and may want to have a third party for that, but our approach is different which is why we work with so few drivers.”

Lowdon explains that understanding how a driver spends his free time away from the track is vitally important to a driver and subsequently knows that could have a significant bearing on the terms of his contract.

He added: “Some management companies work with lots of drivers signed to them and in that instance it is buying knowledge, but that might not get the best out of the athlete. Some of the challenges for the young drivers in partially are quite common, there are some things you’ve…