r/F1Technical • u/oliverracing1 Verified F1 Performance Engineer • Jan 22 '22
Industry Insights Industry Insights – Factory Based Performance Engineer
Hi All,
I’m been asked by a few people now to give some insight into my job and how I got here. As per previous posts I won’t go into too much detail on some of my days to day tasks but have given a rough outline of some of the more regular tasks so hopefully that is interesting, also worth noting this is 100% from my perspective, not that of the team.
u/GaryGiesel has already covered a fair few elements of what I would have said so I’ll try not double up on what he’s written too much!
From a young age I have been interested in F1 and my parents always suspected I’d end up in engineering of some description as always been tinkering or buildings things. I knew I wanted to work in F1 from around the age of 10 after being hearing that my teachers’ husband worked for a local team, which to my young ears sounded the coolest job ever, so I really tailored my education and experience towards this as much as possible. I was also very lucky to grow up local to lots of F1 teams in the “motorsport valley” so was able to get school work experience and summer jobs at my current team and a year in industry at another team as part of my degree course.
As you may expect, education wise I was always biased towards maths and the sciences but also enjoyed applied/engineering subjects so focused on these from GCSE onwards. A-Levels I took Maths, Physics and Design and Technology, also taking Further Maths to AS.
I went on to study Automotive Engineering at University as I was recommended this course by a few colleagues when on summer placements. Looking back, I feel this was the ideal course for me, as it was car focused and there was a good mix of modules that allowed me to specialise in the direction I wanted, whilst also being general enough to avoid the pitfalls of some (not all) motorsport engineering courses that sometimes aren’t highly valued outside of the motorsport sector. As is often said on here, something like Mechanical Engineering would have been a good option too but would have contained a more modules that would have been less interesting to me, so I have no regrets with my choice. It’s worth noting a good percentage of the students on my course have had no issues getting jobs outside of the automotive sector.
Whilst I didn’t get involved with formula student at university, I would definitely recommend getting involved as much as possible, I was very lucky to be friends with someone running a formula Renault car so spent a fair few weekends helping him out gaining experience there and later on I got myself a project car that took up all my spare time fixing and competing in autosolos. That paired with Uni work left no spare time for FS!
Whilst doing post A-level and Uni summer/short term placements at my current team I completely a range of tasks, from developing ride analysis and GPS competitor analysis tools to debugging and evaluation tasks. I was also involved in the suspension pre-event tasks for a couple of events which was fairly daunting as I had just finished my A-Levels (admittedly my boss had assumed I was degree level as I knew MATLAB fairly well, and they only found out on my final day when they asked what I had planned after I graduated and I replied I was starting Uni next week…).
On my year in industry I worked for a different team, where I was situated in the design office, working primarily on suspension and steering design. I found this very interesting and really enjoyed the work, although at points it was fairly stressful and full on, but I loved seeing my parts at the track and believe the team still use an evolution of some of the setup kit that I designed when there. Whilst working there I also volunteered in the race control room, it was a very small group at the time (6 people including me) which allowed me to get involved with lots of different tasks such as GPS and Audio competitor analysis and pit stop analysis, this was mostly focused on the timing of the individual mechanics in the stop, but also looking at how the driver could save time on entry and exit, even getting to speak directly to the drivers on occasions which was more than a little daunting at the time – especially when a certain Brazilian driver answered back!
After graduating I spent a year doing a ski season and travelling mixed with a few shorter-term placements at my current team, before landing my current permanent role, whilst this is a fairly unconventional route after Uni, I’m 100% glad I did it as feel I got the “ski bum” bug out of the system and confirmed a customer facing job is definitely not for me (not at all my fault but managed to get a named mention in a 1 star TripAdvisor review whilst working as a ski tech!)
My current day to day role is within the Performance Optimisation Section, which is within the Vehicle Performance Group, a department which looks at various performance sections, such the ride and suspension, mathematical modelling and includes the simulator section too. As a section we perform computer simulations to investigate the effects of changing components on the car and analyse track data to provide information and support to various departments such as the trackside engineers, aerodynamicists, design office and production.
I can’t list all of my day to day tasks as a few are fairly specific, but the main elements of mine and my colleagues day to day jobs are tool development, pre-event analysis where we optimise the aero, suspension and brake cooling setups for race weekends and even future cars and post event model correlation where we match our vehicle model to laps from the weekend using a variety of scalings and offsets.
I also work in the race operations room on race weekends, the work here is very different to the weekday tasks and we need to be working similar hours to the track – e.g. for Australia we get up and midnight and Austin or Mexico don’t leave until around 5am. One of my key responsibilities is reliability/loads monitoring, making sure the suspension and chassis loads aren’t exceeding the design limits, and passing the information on to the relevant trackside staff should they do so – you never see an F1 car clip a wall or hit the curb hard the same way again after doing this, as I’m always imagining all the overload alarms the engineer monitoring that car is seeing! We also try to act as an extra set of eyes for the trackside performance engineers, keeping an eye that general setup changes are having the expected effect.
Another task that we do at the weekend is the brake cooling analysis, this is a surprisingly detailed task where we have to evaluate the best cooling and disc option, balancing keeping the brakes cool when the car is heavy with fuel and in traffic whilst maximising aero performance and not letting the brakes be too cold nearer the end of the race, paired with the fun that you sometimes have to react quickly should there be a “change of climatic conditions” (aka rain). An interesting example of where a team got this very wrong is Imola last year where Aston Martin sent the cars out on a damp track with way too aggressive brake setup and overheated the rear brakes on the laps to the grid, forcing a pitlane start for one car.
The final task that I do at the weekend is GPS competitor analysis, we look at a variety of factors such as comparing corner and straight line speeds to help assess where we are in terms of setup and where we are losing time compared to competitors.
Overall it would be fair to say I love my job, it may have some wacky hours and a fair few long (but normally interesting) days, but overall the reward of seeing your car hit the track and score points is amazing, if you’re lucky enough you may even get to experience a podium or win!
I’ll be checking the post over the next few days if anyone has any questions – please ask here rather than dm to keep the answers open to all!
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u/Username8831 Jan 22 '22
I don't know if this question is allowed given this is the Technical sub and not the main, and this isn't really a technical question, so feel free to ignore if so.
When something controversial happens in F1 - Abu Dhabi being the most recent example but I really don't mean to limit my question to this incident alone - is there as much of a spread of opinion as there is in the fan community, and do people get as partisan? I sort of assume it's a more professional atmosphere and therefore more measured responses from most individuals inside F1 teams.