Every day at work, David Zubíček fulfils his childhood dream: A little boy from the Zlín region, who was fascinated by watching fast cars at the local Barum Rally, is now a true motorsport professional. He works as a car engineer at Toyota Gazoo Racing, the person responsible for the preparation of the rally car. Not only his studies at the Brno University of Technology, but also his work in the TU Brno Racing team helped him into the big world of rallying.
We're on a video call, where am I catching you now?
I'm at home right now, in Jyväskylä, Finland, where I live. But next week we're going to Sweden for more races. It took me a while to get used to living in Finland, in winter it's really cold and not very sunny, but you get used to it. In addition, we travel a lot to the competitions: Italy, Portugal, Kenya in a few weeks, ... So in that way, it's easier.
Do you sometimes get a chance to return home to the Czech Republic? Maybe to see your beloved Barum Rally?
Last year, my wife and I were in the Czech Republic for about a week and then for Christmas. I spend a little more time in Finland. And about thirteen times a year, two weeks a year, I'm abroad for competitions. The last time I saw the Barum Rally was in 2022, when my girlfriend, now my wife (Karolína Zubíčková, née Jugasová, worked as a rally navigator, editor's note), was racing. Thanks to the fact that my wife also likes motorsport, she also understands my work, which is important to me.
The Barum Rally has shaped you quite a bit, hasn't it? It was there that the big dream of getting into the world of motorsport was born...
I come from a village about ten kilometres from Zlín, so I grew up in it. My dad is a big fan of rallying, he was the one who brought me to rallying. I've gravitated towards it since I was a kid and I wanted to be a racer. But you have to have a certain financial background for that to make it happen, and I didn't have that. That's why I took the path of a car engineer so that I could participate in races in a different way. It was a clear goal. I went to the Automotive High School and then to the Brno University of Technology, where I knew that I could continue in Automotive and Material Handling Engineering.
During your studies at the Brno University of Technology, you joined the TU Brno Racing Student Formula team almost at its beginnings. How do you remember this experience?
It wasn't the very beginning. When I joined the team, it had been in operation for three or four years, so it had already been established. Anyway, it was a great school and I would recommend it to everyone who likes motorsport. The technology you can work with and the things you can learn there, it's all a great benefit. Without this Formula, it would have been much more difficult for me to get into the world of motorsport.
Subsequently, one of the founders of the formula at BUT, Milan Poláček, helped you join the Toyota team. What role did he play in this?
Crucial, thanks to him I am in the Toyota factory team. We got to know each other during the Formula times and we kept in touch even at the time when I was already working for Roman Kresta's private team and Milan was in Škoda Motorsport. When he was working for the Toyota Gazoo Racing factory team, he informed me that they had an open position for a car engineer. I applied, went through the selection process and now I'm here.
If we go back a step: after university, you first worked in the private team of the aforementioned Roman Kresta. What did the transition to real life actually look like? Did it meet your expectations?
I had already worked in smaller teams, such as autocross teams, in high school and during college, so I had an idea of how it would work. The possibilities for development within a private team are limited, both financially, but also because you have a car that is more or less developed, and you only change the details as part of the homologation. The goal is to prepare the car for the customer so that he or she is satisfied. A bigger jump than between school and the first job was between the private and factory team.
What was the big change?
In a factory team, you are more or less developing a new car. You start from the ground up: the design guys design the car, and then we, as the car engineers, work to develop the car to make it faster and more reliable. You simply build a car from scratch, that's not the case with a private team. The number of people who are involved in the construction and development is incomparable. Whether it's in the office, workshops and the plants themselves. For a private team, it's about ten people, while for a factory team, you have dozens of people per vehicle.
At Toyota, we are currently using a car for which the regulations were set about three or four years ago. The whole car has been developed and homologated according to these regulations, and now we can make smaller changes within the homologation. However, even though we can't build another car, we build a completely new and fresh car for each race, from new or inspected parts, adapted to a specific type of race. For example, it makes a difference whether you have a gravel car or an asphalt car. At that time, Milan Poláček was in charge of the development of the current car.
So you're still colleagues. Apart from you, how many Czechs are there in the team?
In addition to me and Milan, there is Jakub Urban, who graduated from the Czech Technical University, and then four mechanics from the Czech Republic. So, there are quite a few of us.
What exactly are you in charge of as a car engineer”?
To put it simply, I am responsible for the vehicle during races. I'm the only one in contact with my crew, either before or after the stage, when they tell me what happened and didn't happen to the car, what needs to be changed. I tell them about any changes before the next stage, changes in the weather, I prepare the whole strategy for the race: the tyres, our target, and the car set-up plan. In the service zones, I assign everything to the mechanics and tell them what needs to be replaced and checked. I have an engine, data and performance engineer with me, so the amount of information that I pass on to the crew and mechanics is really big. That's how we go through the whole race. When it comes to racing, I work with one particular crew, which is Takamoto Katsuta and Aaron Johnston.
Sometimes I also take part in tests between races and in the meantime, I am in charge of preparing all the race cars. I'm preparing a specification of parts to be used and specifying the method of how the cars should be built for the race.
What do you enjoy most about it?
Probably looking for a set-up that suits the specific crew, with which they are able to achieve fast times and fight for the top positions. So that everything is one hundred per cent ready and the crew doesn't have to focus on anything else but the race itself.
Your work revolves a lot around development. How are trends in the automotive industry making their way into rallying?
At the moment, cars are equipped with a hybrid system, we use fuel made based on hydrocarbons without the use of fossil fuels with a mixture of synthetic and bio components, so we go hand in hand with modern trends. The rules and documents for the construction of the vehicles are prepared by the FIA (Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile, ed.), which continuously develops it. We are discussing what the future will bring, whether it will go the way of electric cars or whether it will continue to be hybrid cars. The possibility of hydrogen cars is also being worked on.
If I were to go back to my studies at BUT, was it a good basis for you? Or is the work in motorsport so specific that you had to learn a lot?
I wouldn't change it, I would definitely go the same way. If there was something I missed in my teaching at BUT, then it was supplemented by the experience of the Student Formula. It helped me to take a step into motorsport, to understand how motorsport works, and what its essence is. Thanks to the Formula, you will also meet many people in the field and gain contacts. I would definitely recommend to everyone interested in motorsport not to be lazy and go for the Student Formula. It's a time-consuming affair, but it's worth it.
| David Zubíček (*1992)
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