Formula 1 teams spend huge sums looking for the smallest performance gains, but you might be surprised to learn that Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 is taking a serious look at something as basic as the light its people work under in order to optimize its operations.

I recently got a look at the team’s approach during a visit to its Brackley headquarters, where Signify has installed more than 1,600 luminaires across two new buildings as part of its partnership with Mercedes.

That includes more than 100 NatureConnect units, designed to replicate the experience of natural daylight indoors.

The Brackley site operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with more than 950 people working across everything from car design and manufacturing to simulation and race support.

And when the team is racing overseas in wildly different time zones, the staff back in the UK don’t log off at 5pm; they need to be at their peak at hugely variable times of the day.

Signify’s NatureConnect installation helps with this as it effectively puts a series of artificial skylights into the ceiling, complete with a simulated view of blue sky.

I had seen NatureConnect before, but seeing it in this environment makes the reason for using it rather more obvious. It doesn’t look like a conventional office lighting installation.

In rooms with no natural light sources the panels are surprisingly convincing.

NatureConnect is designed to reproduce some of the characteristics of daylight, including changing light levels and colour throughout the day.

Its Day Rhythm setting automatically adjusts the lighting, while brighter and warmer scenes can be selected depending on what the room is being used for.

Signify’s argument is that this can help with alertness, concentration and the body’s circadian rhythm.

And Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS are taking it seriously, as I was told that NatureConnect is also being used in driver areas, while both George Russell and season-leader Kimi Antonelli are using the technology in their rooms and it is also taken on the road in the drivers’ trucks.

It makes sense as an F1 driver can spend a season bouncing between time zones, often with very little opportunity for their body clock to settle into a normal routine.

The team can be working in Brackley while supporting a race taking place on the other side of the world, with sessions scheduled at times that would be completely unnatural to anyone working a conventional job.

Light is one of the things the team can actually control and Signify is providing personalised light plans and circadian lighting programmes as part of the partnership, with the aim of helping drivers manage jet lag and adjust to different schedules.

There are plenty of caveats here, of course. This isn’t some secret weapon that is going to find three tenths of a second around Silverstone. Nor is there evidence that switching on a NatureConnect skylight directly improves lap time.

But Mercedes doesn’t need every marginal gain to be measurable on a stopwatch to be interested in it. The team is trying to remove as many small sources of friction as it can, whether that’s from the car, the software, the working environment or the people operating the whole thing.

And that’s why the lighting installation at Brackley is much bigger than NatureConnect.

Across the two buildings there are more than 1,600 luminaires, including more than 700 3D-printed myCreation products, over 500 Philips fixtures and more than 300 from Modular.

Some of it is conventional architectural lighting. Some of it is designed around the way the team works. And some of it is specifically aimed at influencing how people feel and perform.

With seven out of the eleven F1 teams either having their main headquarters or major technical operations within a small geographic radius dubbed “Motorsport Valley” - i.e. within 35 miles of Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS - staff movement is obviously rife across the industry, so it’s a no brainer to make the working environment as appealing as possible.

I was shown around the new Health and Well-being hub, where food areas, a gym and other spaces have been transformed by Signify lighting, with science playing as big a part as aesthetics when it came to decisions around placements, hues and so on.

By rethinking something as simple as light, Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS is hoping that peak performance isn’t just engineered in the wind tunnel, but nurtured in the workplace.

If a tuned-in lighting setup gives their engineers sharper focus during a 3am strategy call or helps a driver beat jet lag in a race on the other side of the world, that unmeasurable edge might just be the most illuminating marginal gain of all.