Anyone need a design/test/trackside engineer?

[MikeHart]

Hi everyone. Apologies for selling myself on here. Feel free to delete this if it is not allowed. I couldn't find anything by searching that says anything about it being prohibited, so appologies if I've missed something.

I'm about to graduate with a 2:1 in Automotive Engineering from the University of Birmingham and am on the look out for an interesting and practical job in either motorsport or the automotive or bike industry. I've been involved in Formula Student for the past 4 years, was powertrain team leader for our team UBRacing last year and am technical director this year. I've also completed a number of projects on the car including overseeing the mapping of last years engine (Yamaha R6 with DTA P8 Pro ECU and sequential fuel injection) and improving the cooling system this year. Currently, I am also helping to develop a new Formula Student tyre with Dunlop Motorsport as a driver.

My particular interests are Powertrain development and Vehicle Dynamics and I like to tie these in with my racing/driving experience and I'd like to further my knowlege in these areas.

If anyone does have or know of any vacancies I can send a full CV as required.

Thanks,

Mike

[inamo]

Best piece of advice I can offer is......

Decide on a series you're interested in, get to their first race meeting of the year and offer to help a team (Do your homework before you go so you know which are the best teams). Most team bosses are too busy to read forums like this, and get hundreds of CV's landing on their desks. It's up to YOU to demonstrate that you have something that those hundreds don't.

Otherwise try contacting people like Judd and Dunlop to see if they need some track support engineers - both have advertised vacancies recently.

Good luck.

[MikeHart]

Thanks for the reply. Two of the Dunlop engineers are ex team members of ours and unfortunately the track support jobs never materialised since myself and everyone else that was interested could not do all the dates because of exams. The pay was great for a student as a part time job, but it wouldn't have been possible to live on it! Shame

It's an unfortunate reality in my experience that most small teams cannot afford the time or money to train someone new as a trackside engineer. They do sometimes seem have one or two spaces though, but even turning up to races I find is not particularly productive since the the correct people for recruitment aren't there! The only person I know of that managed to get something like this, got the job because it was his friend and his racing/running a Formula Renault a couple of years ago. Again, the pay was about £8 an hour and it wasn't exactly engineering!

My inquiry was more directed to people who perhaps knew of openings at their companies that weren't advertised.

[inamo]

There's many roads to Rome.... If you can't find a job that pays your bills in motorsport there's always the option of working in the Auto industry for a day job and racing in your holidays and weekends - That's what I do and have a good balance between relatively stable job, good salary, sensible working hours, pension etc and opportunity to learn and work as race engineer in my spare time.

It's a tough world out there, and opportunities are usually created by the person that wants them to happen. I am still working with the team I started out with when working on my MSc thesis, initially just cleaning cars and gofering, through to assistant engineer and race engineer roles for 2 oval racing championship wins, this year I'll be data engineering for them in a European series. I've also worked as a mechanic with another team including 2 Le Mans, was it what I originally had in mind? Absolutely not, but I learnt a lot from it and had the opportunity to be part of the most amazing race in the world, that was as a direct result of turning up at a race meeting.

Well worth keeping your options open and looking at the jobs on offer in Autosport and motorsportcareers.com. But hey all advice is only worth what you pay for it, everyone has their own approach to life. I can guarantee though that qualifications are worth a fraction of a demonstrable ability to contribute to a team and a willingness to pick up some spanners in a crisis, help load the truck etc.

Good luck

[MikeHart]

Couldn't agree more with what you've said, and that's my current plan unless anything else comes up. I felt posting an 'advert' on here couldn't hurt

I have a feeling my initial post perhaps sounded like I was rather naive and didn't know what I needed to do which I didn't mean to be the case It sounds like we have a similar approach to creating a path into motorsport and I have a career plan to gain the experiene and skills I want and need.

My current plan unless anything else comes up is to work within the automotive industry (I've applied to most of the well companies and consultancies here in the UK), gain plenty of experience in engineering processes and management and sideline some racing stuff at weekends. I'm actually hoping to run myself in the Caterham Supergraduates series next year (providing my lovely bank will loan my the money I need for the car ). Obviously being from a Formula Student background means I'm very much used to building stuff! I find it hard to understand how so many 'engineers' can not get involved in helping make stuff either in their job or free time!

[ian_w]

I'm not sure of the current situation at work ( Ilmor Engineering ) but we were interviewing graduates not that long ago. There is no harm in sending a CV to hr@ilmor.co.uk

Ian

[MikeHart]

Ian, I did work experience with Ilmor when I was 16, and my 'mentor' was a certain Ian W! Were you by any chance that Ian W?

[JohnMiller]

You could do much worse than listen to the good advice of inamo.

Another "story" - last year we had a graduating student acting as a data engineer.

This was not an overly paid position - expenses and prize money share only.

If you expect paying, you need to realise that in many ways a student is a liability to a team as someone who needs supervising and managing!

He also had to get stuck in and help with other work, such as loading/unloading the truck, setting up the garage and getting tyres mounted etc., all hard work. I do know he had a great time and made a lot of good friends though.

Having invested in himself for a season, he also used his ability, his qualifications, and his actual experience with us and is now a bona fide test engineer with Red Bull Technologies earning a salary that I think all graduates would be delighted with. I believe the real, hands-on experience was quite vital to help him secure his current position...

[MikeHart]

Cheers for the reply. The hands on experience is precisely why I did Formula Student and also why I will continue to look for part time weekend work in addition to a fully paid job....providing I'm not supporting my own racing efforts that is!

[ian_w]

Originally Posted by MikeHart

Ian, I did work experience with Ilmor when I was 16, and my 'mentor' was a certain Ian W! Were you by any chance that Ian W?

I'm not sure if it was me - but I am getting older and the old memory is going a bit now. There are 2 Ian W's at Ilmor - I'm Mr Whiteside, the other is Mr Watson.

Ian

[ubrben]

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Ben