Yujiao Cao, a Graduate Engineer at Komatsu Australia, and Nick Colwell, a Field Service Technician and Komatsu Australia’s 2024 Apprentice of the Year, recently had an opportunity only a select handful of Komatsu personnel get during the year: they got to shadow the Atlassian Williams Racing pit crew and learn about how this job works in the high speed, high pressure world of Formula 1 racing.
Cao and Colwell both have different roles at Komatsu. Cao works with the reliability engineering team currently, gathering information on components and data from their field performance to refine the manufacturing process and build long-lasting, durable components. However, an upcoming rotation will place her with the Smart Construction team. Colwell, as a field service technician, repairs Komatsu machines in the New South Wales state of Australia.
“It’s never the same day to day. One day, you might go to a job in a quarry, and the next you could be working in the bush, and you never know what you’re in for. It’s always a learning opportunity every day,” Colwell says.
Williams and Komatsu personnel, including Colwell (second from the left) and Cao (second from the right) celebrate during the Australian Grand Prix.
The Atlassian Williams Racing/Komatsu program is called Day in the Life. It selects two participants at eight races from Komatsu and its distributors to work alongside the race team. Neither Cao or Colwell had a ton of experience with F1 previously, but had come to learn more when the partnership was announced in early 2024. They also immersed themselves more once they found out they had been selected — something that came as a surprise to both of them.
“I got a call from a rotation program sponsor, and he told me you’ve won and award,” Cao said. “He told me, ‘You get to go to F1, and it's going to happen in Melbourne. And it's just a huge surprise for us because we didn't know what was this about, and he just kind of dropped a present in front of me.”
Both Cao and Colwell brushed up on F1 in preparation — not just the team, but the work of the pit crew in preparation for their Day in the Life. The opportunity came to fruition at the Australian Grand Prix weekend, March 14, 15 and 16. The Day in the Life participants don’t step into the crew on the actual race day, but rather work alongside the Atlassian Williams Racing crew during practices, when the technicians and drivers work on optimising the cars' performance for race day. It’s still an environment where speed matters, and the pit crew may only have a few seconds to fix an issue so Atlassian Williams Racing drivers don’t fall behind other race teams.
“It was a massive eye opener for me to get into the pit and see how everything was put together, and what members of the team did what,” Colwell says.
Cao came away surprised by the “unspoken understanding” between team members, “of what they should be doing and what is their goal. It’s kind of a mutual understanding between them, and it looks chaotic, but everyone’s just doing their job.”
When Komatsu and Atlassian Williams Racing renewed its partnership in 2024, it united its shared values — ambition, perseverance, collaboration and authenticity — on and off the racetrack. It also gave select Komatsu employees and employees of distributors worldwide a once-in-a-lifetime chance to work alongside the Williams crew on practice days before the big race. This involves being in the pit as technicians work on Formula 1 cars, including changing tires, troubleshooting technical issues that have come up and generally supporting the drivers. The program, called Day in the Life, also provides participants the opportunity to see the races during that weekend.
The first Day in the Life program ran in the 2024 season, and Komatsu and Atlassian Williams Racing are thrilled to continue the program. Upcoming races in Japan, Miami, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Italy, Mexico and Brazil will also feature Day in the Life opportunities, further strengthening the foundational bond between Komatsu and Atlassian Williams Racing.
