People

Peter Tibbetts

The number of FIA personnel at each Grand Prix has grown steadily in recent years as the governing body of motorsport has introduced a more technical and a more uniform approach to race organization, scrutineering and safety. Today the group consists of the race direction team, scrutineers, doctors, safety car drivers, media delegates, truck drivers and even a secretary. Peter Tibbetts is one of the team, his job being to take fuel samples from the cars and analyze them in the on-site facility which is transported to each race. This small gray box houses a Hewlett-Packard gas chromatograph in which Tibbetts can quickly ascertain if a fuel is legal or not. There is no argument and so there are no delays while testing is carried out.

Tibbetts is not an FIA employee but goes to every race and because fuel analysis is not a hugely time-consuming business at the race he doubles up as the FIA observer in the Safety Car to ensure that the cars behave themselves in the queue behind the vehicle and to give instructions to drivers as is necessary while the Safety car driver Oliver Gavin concentrates on the driving.

Tibbetts graduated from Bristol University in England in 1976 with a BSc degree in chemistry and geology. He then studied for a doctorate in organic geochemistry and in 1979 joined the Masspec Analytrical company as a senior chemist, his job being to do environmental analysis, particularly oil-spill fingerprinting. After four years he moved on and helped to establish M-Scan Ltd., a consulting analytical laboratory of which he is a director. This is one of a network of M-Scan agencies around the world, the British operation being based in Ascot, Berkshire.

In 1995 the FIA asked M-Scan to conduct fuel approval analysis following the introduction of a new regulation which dictated that fuel suppliers sent samples to the FIA before the racing season began. From these M-Scan produced a chemical "fingerprint" of the fuel and all samples must then match the "fingerprint". It was logical that the deal be extended to include an M-Scan analyst at each race and Tibbetts got the job.