Ep016:

Braking Point

Ruaraidh McDonald-Walker went from a childhood obsession with taking things apart to becoming one of the engineers behind Mercedes’ pioneering hybrid era in Formula 1. In this episode, he unpacks how early curiosity led him into combustion, then electrification, and eventually into the challenge of designing motors no one had ever built before. Ruaraidh explains how Mercedes fused chassis and power-unit engineering into one coherent system — and how that approach helped shape one of the most dominant periods in modern F1.

But the heartbeat of this conversation is the 2014 Canadian Grand Prix, where a slow, invisible rise in temperatures triggered a cascading failure that nearly derailed Mercedes’ season. Ruaraidh takes us inside the factory, onto the pit wall, and through the decision-making under pressure as a tiny overlooked electronic component brought both cars to the edge. The story becomes a masterclass in engineering leadership: derate early, avoid decision stasis, remove blame, and let data — not ego — guide the call. From physics to predictive modelling to the culture that enables bold ideas, Ruaraidh shows what it really takes to build at the limit.