In 1989, with only a passing interest in cars and racing, having completed an electronic engineering apprenticeship, a young Permane applied to the Benetton team for a job that happened to match his skill set. He found himself being half the electronics department at a time when F1 electronics was in its infancy. Exciting times in the early days of active suspension.
The job expanded, going from being factory based to joining the test team as an Electronic Engineer, which provided Alan with his first ever sighting of a Formula 1 car on track at Imola in 1989, with Johnny Herbert and Alessandro Nannini driving. In 1990 he moved to the race team and the first Grand Prix he attended was in Phoenix, still as an Electronic Engineer, before being promoted to Junior/Assistant Race Engineer in 1996, working on Jean Alesi’s car. The following year, he continued to work with the mercurial French driver, but by now Alan was promoted to Race Engineer. Up until 2006, he had spells race engineering for Giancarlo Fisichella and Jarno Trulli, but the list of drivers that Permane worked with reads like a Who’s Who of F1 talent from the mid-Nineties, including multiple world champions, Nelson Piquet and Michael Schumacher. Alan singles out winning the 1995 Constructors’ title with Schumacher and Jonny Herbert at the wheel, as one of the main highlights of his career. That and the two year period in 2005 and 2006, when the team won the Drivers’ title with Fernando Alonso as well as the Constructors’. Alan was working “on the other side of the garage” but still feels a great sense of pride about working with the Spanish champion. In 2007, Alan was appointed chief race engineer for Renault F1 and from mid-2011 to mid-2016 he was put in charge of all trackside engineering, after which he was made Sporting Director, a role he fulfilled until leaving the team at the end of 2023, prior to joining the Racing Bulls at the start of this year.
A Sporting Director has to know the regulations inside out and that knowledge is handy when applied to Permane’s current role with us as Racing Director. In a nutshell he is responsible for all engineering aspects at the track, mainly on the chassis side, with the team’s experts in each area working on the detail, while Permane deals with the overview, which can also involve liaising with Honda on such areas as Power Unit allocation, as well as contributing to other elements including strategy and tyre management. Decades of experience is important when bringing all those roles together, as it is when supporting the drivers, especially youngsters, like our current pair. Advising Yuki and Liam and literally keeping them on the straight and narrow is also part of his remit, because as Alan says, “the two things you want to do above all else in Formula 1 is go faster and not stop before the chequered flag!”
