Good evening EUROAVIAns,
in today’s Fact Friday we will talk about Engineers and Formula1
Being part of a Formula1 team is the dream of a lot of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering students. But what does it take to be chosen among the number of candidates applying every year?
Today we’ll talk about Andrea Stella, now a McLaren racing director. He graduated in Aerospace Engineering at the University “La Sapienza” in Rome, but he did not stop to learn, completing a PhD with an experimental study on fluid dynamics of flames in 2000.
After completing his studies he managed to enter in Formula1’s world immediately: he began his career at Ferrari in 2000 as a Performance Engineer for the test team, but he very quickly became Performance Engineer for Michael Schumacher and Kimi Räikkönen. In 2010 he became Race Engineer for Fernando Alonso. In 2015 McLaren offered to have him in its team and managed to convince the ambitious engineer, offering the role of Head of Race Operations. He became Performance Director in 2018 and finally Racing Director in 2019, working directly under Team Principal Andreas Seidl.
What is his secret? His passion for the racing world pushed him to decide to study engineering and always guided and motivated him, even in the worst moments, for example facing “impossible” exams. He doesn’t like thinking about his position and what he has achieved, always trying to improve or always studying, because a lot of things cannot be learned at university, rather, they’re learned only while working on real problems. He underlines the importance of the method we use to study, which is sometimes even more important than the contents in our formation.
To conclude, if your dream-job is in a Formula1 team, a degree in Aerospace or Mechanical Engineering seems to be a very good choice, but you can’t think that’s enough because ambition, determination and hard work are essential to achieve your objectives.