#13 – Henry Mercier – CDR – Chris Dittmann Racing
Safety in motorsport extends far beyond protecting drivers on the track. Across circuits, pits and paddocks, teams must manage hazards ranging from fuels and machinery to fatigue, time pressure and unclear accountability – often in environments where performance depends on making rapid decisions.
MotorsportInsight spoke with Safety Rocks Founder and Managing Director Carla Crocombe about the importance of building a positive safety culture and embedding safety into everyday working practices, rather than treating it as a compliance exercise. From tailored training to psychological safety and human factors, we explore how motorsport can create safer environments for everyone connected to the sport.
Could you introduce yourself and your background?
I’m the managing director and founder of Safety Rocks, which focuses on truly tailored safety training. Even after all these years, you’ll find me in the classroom every week. It means I see first-hand what makes safety messaging stick – and what makes people switch off.
My career started in gas detection, where my interest in fuels, vapours, and explosive atmospheres began. Before founding Safety Rocks, I worked as a trainer for the Health Protection Agency.
We made the sessions relaxed, open and relevant so that people wanted to become safety advocates, but the problem was often the approach, not the subject; health and safety still had this image of being “male, pale and stale”.
You founded Safety Rocks in 2015. What made you think there had to be a better way of doing safety training?
Safety was often treated as a tick-box exercise. People would sit through exactly the same generic course whether they worked in an office or a factory. By mid-morning, you could see them switching off because the material had no relevance or application to their jobs. Afterwards, the certificate would be filed, and everybody would say, “Don’t worry, I’ve done the training,” but nothing had actually changed.
For me, safety works best when it is built around the people doing the jobs, rather than trying to make people fit into systems. We set up Safety Rocks to work differently: learning how a client operates and building the course around its tasks, language, and real risks, without filling it with irrelevant information. Excellence is one of our values, alongside fun, integrity, mindfulness and timeliness. Vocalising those values helps everyone who works with me understand how we see the world.
People think safety is boring, but I can say with complete confidence that it isn’t. The work has taken me around the world and into some fascinating places. Our work is incredibly broad. One day we might teach a defence organisation; the next, we could be working in high-end television or film, covering production safety and risk management. After that, it might be behavioural training for lorry drivers.
Safety Rocks has increasingly become involved in motorsport. What first brought you into the industry, and what have you learned about its particular safety challenges?
Cars have always been part of my life. My dad collected supercars and historic vehicles from around the world, so I grew up around these incredible, beautiful machines and the people involved with them. I would sit by the fence at Brands Hatch watching the Touring Cars, and watch the World Rally Championship when it came to the UK. I simply loved cars, so when the opportunity came to bring my safety work into motorsport, it felt like coming home.
I assumed risk would already be well managed in the sport. What I discovered was that almost every risk I had encountered in other industries was present (often many times over), but it was not always managed effectively.
Time pressure is one of the biggest issues. When a car has to be turned around in minutes, people take shortcuts. They are not deliberately being careless; the system rewards speed. In Formula One, people are trained to within an inch of their lives, but as you move down through the levels towards club racing, the same degree of training is not necessarily there, but the time pressure remains.
The lines of accountability can also be unclear. At an event, people often assume everything is the circuit’s responsibility, but an external organiser may bring in thousands of cars, temporary structures and catering vans. The venue cannot be accountable for things it has no ability to control.
Team managers are another interesting example. In the paddock, they can effectively assume the role of the employer and become responsible for everybody under their charge, including volunteers who may be paid in bacon sandwiches. People do not always realise that. Just because you enjoy an activity does not mean it is not work; enjoyment simply makes the time pass more quickly.
The most glaring issue, though, is competence. In safety, competence has a specific meaning: the right knowledge, attitude, training and experience. Someone may have held a role for years or have grandfather rights, but that does not necessarily make them competent. If they are not competent, how can the person learning from them become competent? There is no point in bluffing. People need to understand what they know, what they don’t know, and what they are responsible for.
Motorsport is inherently high-risk, but it has also developed sophisticated safety measures. Where are the biggest opportunities to improve safety now?
When we write rules or design work, we have to remember that humans are inherently prone to failure. We make mistakes, become tired or ill and lose concentration. The answer isn’t simply to blame people; it is to introduce technological and process-driven controls so safety doesn’t depend on everyone getting everything right every time.
When something goes wrong, I would rather ask what made the error easy to make. Was somebody tired after working for 12 hours without eating or sleeping properly? Was the procedure unclear? Was there pressure not to speak up? That is where human factors and psychological safety become so important.
I call the opportunity “people power”. Motorsport is brilliant at engineering performance into a car, but we should apply the same discipline to people. A pit crew changing four tyres in around two seconds is not lucky. That performance has been designed, drilled, measured and briefed; it involves muscle memory and motor patterning.
We can take that same approach to fatigue, communication, workload and wellbeing. It does not only make people safer; it makes them sharper, more consistent and more resilient. Those lessons can then travel between motorsport, aviation, transport, pharmaceuticals, advanced engineering and film production.
One idea we have implemented is the pre-mortem. Instead of waiting until something has gone wrong and conducting a post-mortem, you imagine the incident beforehand and work backwards to understand how it might happen. It gives you the opportunity to learn the lessons in advance.
What does a positive safety culture look like in practice? Is there resistance because people worry safety will make the sport slower or more restrictive?
There is definitely resistance to cultural change in motorsport. It’s not always seen as work, but rather as an old boys’ club where people come together to have fun.
“Good safety is performance”
I understand some of the resistance because people love motorsport for being fast, bold, and exciting, and the word “safety” can sound like it will get in the way. But good safety is performance. A dropped wheel nut, a strained back, or a near miss in the garage costs time, costs points, and people. You cannot win if you cannot manage risk consistently, and the best teams already understand that – they are tightly run and disciplined because that’s what wins races.
A positive culture means a mechanic can say, “Stop, that’s not right,” without being made to feel slow. It means teams review near misses together without blame, and leaders follow the same rules they expect others to follow.
Alongside the pre-mortem, we use a guided conversation about choices. It helps people understand the personal advantages and disadvantages of different decisions, so safety becomes their choice rather than simply a rule. That creates buy-in. It is not about telling people what they cannot do; it is about helping them live longer and continue doing what they love.
Safety Rocks is now the Official Health and Safety Training Partner of Motorsport UK. What does that involve?
The relationship grew from our social-purpose strategy and allows us to support the sport holistically, including British F4 and Girls on Track. British F4 drivers can begin at around 15, and they reach speeds of 160mph, so we want to bring practical, relevant safety expertise to those young drivers, their teams and the next generation of engineers and data analysts.
By spending time in paddocks and speaking to circuits, we identified a real gap: there was no accredited risk-management training specifically for motorsport. We therefore launched the NEBOSH-verified Essential Risk Management in Motorsport course, the first verified course of its kind with an examining body. It gives teams, organisers, promoters, officials and championship organisers recognised training based on the risks they actually face.
When I started, safety was largely treated as an engineering matter concerning the car, circuit, licences and permits. Now there is far greater openness around mental health, fatigue, welfare, culture and inclusion. There is still a huge amount to do, but the appetite is there.
What particular safety considerations does the industry need to think about when women and young people enter motorsport?
Safeguarding has to be right. Young people spend long days at events, often away from home and in a fast-paced, very adult environment. They need proper rest and supervision, as well as clear routes for raising concerns. They may not perceive risk in the same way as adults because they do not yet have the same life experience.
Psychological safety is equally important. If you are the youngest person in the garage, the only woman or the only person from a particular ethnic background, it can be difficult to say, “I’m not sure” or “That doesn’t look right.” You may already feel that you have to prove you belong.
Personal protective equipment is another issue. It is not used enough in paddocks, and too much of it is still designed around the average adult man. Fundamentally, if the equipment doesn’t fit properly, people aren’t protected.
On a similar note, are there specific areas that you think can sometimes be overlooked when it comes to safety in motorsport?
A great deal of risk also sits away from the racetrack. Pits, paddocks and rally service areas are busy temporary workplaces containing fuels, gas bottles, generators, hot components, sharp objects, moving vehicles, quad bikes and tyre trolleys. People see racing as dangerous and sometimes assume everything around it should be dangerous too, but a family visiting a circuit reasonably expects to be kept safe.
Marshals are another overlooked group. The sport cannot operate without them, yet they are volunteers who may stand in exposed positions and bad weather for as long as 14 hours. Their welfare, training and contribution deserve much greater recognition.
Fatigue and mental health are major concerns too. The season is relentless, and the pressure can be intense. Even I reach a point in the season where I’ve had enough for the year. We need to be honest about the effect that intensity has on people.
You were recently involved in the first UK Motorsport Safety Day. What did it entail, and which other initiatives make you particularly proud?
We created Motorsport Safety Day because there had never been one. The first event took place in June at Motorsport UK’s headquarters in Bicester and brought together officials, medical professionals, safety teams, marshals, manufacturers and people from across the sport.
The highlight was seeing how many people had wanted to take action but had never felt they had a voice or platform. Again, that comes back to psychological safety. We sat together, talked and launched our course – with a lovely big cake. We intend to make it an annual event, held each June at different venues, giving people a chance to contribute ideas, celebrate successes, and learn from failures.
I’m also incredibly proud of our work with Girls on Track. We wanted to bring the programme more firmly into the East of England, so last year we held an activation at Lotus for 150 schoolgirls over two days. They took part in hazard-spotting, pit-stop and production challenges. Since then, we have worked alongside the British Army Motorsport Association and brought in aviation activities from London Luton Airport.
We also created a rapid-assessment exercise based on incident investigation. The girls had to distinguish between immediate, underlying and root causes rather than simply blaming the person involved. One of my favourite comments was: “Miss, I now realise I shouldn’t blame people for everything.”
Fuel Her Voice is another initiative that’s given people the chance to spend time in the paddock and gain experience in social media and content creation. Many people simply need an opportunity to be there, speak to others and learn. An experience like that can change a life.
What keeps you interested in motorsport, and what would you most like to see change over the next few years?
I would love to see three things. First, human factors should become a standard part of incident investigation. We should not simply blame people; we should look at system failures and ask what made an error easy to make.
Second, there should be genuine investment in the welfare of volunteers and young people. Trust is currency. Motorsport relies on marshals, volunteers, young drivers and their families, small teams and partners who contribute far more than they are ever paid for. If people don’t feel valued, heard, and safe, they will walk away. The sport will then lose the very people it depends upon.
Third, motorsport should become a place where everybody, whatever their background, feels psychologically safe enough to say, “I’m not safe here” or “This is wrong.” We do not have that yet.
Ultimately, I want safety to be discussed in the paddock in exactly the same way as lap times: as something everybody is proud to improve.
I consider myself a disruptor. Sometimes somebody from outside needs to walk in and say, “We need to do this differently.” Young people increasingly expect to be safe and cared for, while parts of the sport are still attached to that old boys’ club culture. We need to bridge that gulf through charm, influence and a willingness to stand up for people.
Motorsport is a sport of constant improvement. Teams will chase a tenth of a second for months. If we apply that same mindset to people and safety, it could be transformational. I would consider that a legacy. That is what keeps me excited and moving forward, but change does not happen overnight.