At time of writing, I’ve been doing my world tour. The volume of engineering students I have met in that time has really got me thinking about the best ways of mentoring the next generation of motorsport engineers.
Unlike 30-40 years ago, you now have dedicated motorsport engineering courses running around the world. That in itself is a good thing, and I have a few of them as customers. However, what is raising alarm bells for me is getting those attending these courses the practical experience they desperately need to be effective. This will be the focus of this month’s article.
To put this in perspective, let’s wind the clock back those 30-40 years, because I was on the tail end of this system. If you wanted to be a motorsport engineer back then, there were two primary roads you went down. You either started as a mechanic, and then graduated to an engineer (I have a number of close friends and trusted colleagues who chose this route, and they are outstanding engineers). However, there were other engineers who completely distrusted anything that couldn’t be fixed using a spanner, so that path could be a bit hit and miss. For the sake of argument, let’s just say it was typically 50 / 50.
The other road was to complete a degree in aerospace or mechanical engineering, and then work
