Working in F1 initially appeared unrealistic to Amelia when Lewis Hamilton was young. Now, as a performance engineer for the McLaren F1 Racing Team, the British engineer aims to ensure this is not the case for future generations. With a passion for motorsport and the ability to thrive under pressure, Amelia Lewis works on development and vehicle performance, initially having an interest in racing when she was a young girl. As her father was a massive Formula 1 fan, her interest in the sport continued to grow, attending numerous Grand Prix competitions with her father. However, what appealed to Amelia as her love for the sport grew, was how it all operated. She mentions how through studying maths and physics in school, she would always be captivated by things such as pit stops, or a particular device on the car, and would always ask why things were done the way they were.
“You had this whole sport, which was set up around engineering these incredible cars, and I just wanted to know how everything worked. All of this stuff that I had been learning about in school, I suddenly understood how it was playing a part in this really exciting sport.”
Initially, Amelia believed that working in a similar role to that of other individuals she watched on TV such as Rob Smedley, who previously worked with the Scuderia Ferrari race team, believing that the role could be compared to being an astronaut or a Hollywood star. A few years later and enrolled at the University of Bath doing her Masters in Mechanical Engineering, and her previous opinions had started to change.
“I’ve always been a huge F1 fan, but I don’t think I considered a career in racing until university. In school, I enjoyed maths and physics, so taking an engineering degree felt like a natural step. It was only when McLaren gave a talk at my university that I realized working for a racing team wasn’t an unattainable dream but something I really could do – I then went off and did my industrial placement year at Williams!” (Team Together)
“I was really fortunate that my university had a really great placement office, and it was an engineering-specific placement office. There was a group of four people whose jobs were just to get the best placement for the engineering students, and so they were really pushing all of the opportunities that came through. I heard about an opportunity at Williams Racing, and the placement office was encouraging people to apply.”
She also attended a talk from McLaren earlier in the year, having started to believe that she was in a strong position to explore a career in F1. Applying to a job in Williams meant that Amelia could work in a design office, and build her CV for future opportunities. Alongside that, she also spoke with her father and worked on her family car to gain more practical experience. She viewed the whole process as a practice, even sitting through the Williams interview, and then was surprised to receive the call that she got the job.
“I had such massive impostor syndrome. Surely not. There must be people who are better at this than me. Why would they want me? It took me a while to get out of that headspace because coming into this industry is so cutting edge, and it is the dream for so many others; it can feel so daunting when you’re there. Especially if you don’t necessarily see other people who look like you there, to feel like you do fit.”
Fortunately, thanks to people like her, she was able to overcome the feeling of being out of place in her work environment and started to build her confidence, gaining more experience by working as a Race Engineer in the W Series for 2 events.
“Part of getting rid of that impostor syndrome is doing a good job. I am now confident that I am a really good performance engineer. Going into my placement year, I had a lot of people around me on my course telling me I only got the job because I was a girl. Even though I knew that they were just jealous, and I knew that it wasn’t true, there’s still a little part of you that hears it and wants to believe it.” (Sports Illustrated)
“A big part is not surrounding myself with those people anymore and having people around me who love me and support me and build me up. I’m somebody who thrives on feedback, so I’ve got a little folder where I’ve saved praise for projects. If somebody emails me and says ‘good job,’ I screenshot that. Whenever I’m feeling like I’m not doing a good job, I might gather a little look in that folder, and think, “You’re not doing great today, but it doesn’t mean you’re not great at your job.” (Sports Illustrated)
“I met a load of fantastic women at my placement at Williams. So I knew there weren’t loads of us, but there were some of us. They were always so encouraging,” Lewis says. (Sports Illustrated)
Amelia now works as a specialist performance engineer with McLaren, but did not know about the role initially. Before, she worked as a stress engineer, responsible for ensuring the various components of the car were as lightweight as possible, as well as strong enough to perform in intense conditions. Once she was exposed to vehicle performance, she loved the role.
“I’m a very impatient person and working in vehicle performance was perfect for me,” she states. “You could say, ‘I think this is a problem,’ then you come up with a test, test it in the simulator, and after three or four laps you’ve got an answer. It just really appealed to my personality.”
The role was not easy at first, because according to Sports Illustrated, Amelia had limited experience with vehicle performance during her time at school, so therefore had to convince her department that she would be able to develop the necessary skills for the role, exploring lectures and thoroughly educating herself through reading every night. However, she worked hard for her role, as McLaren highlighted their desire for a more diverse workforce, with 43% of its workforce in 2021 being women. There is still work to be done with STEM education and providing more opportunities for women to gain practical experience and advance to working in F1, Amelia is well aware of the issues she faced with being the only woman in the room, in college with just 20 women amongst 200 students in mechanical engineering. In F1? It became even more rare. Nevertheless, she loves her job, and she continues to inspire the next generation of individuals who see F1 as their passion, as well as show other girls that a dream to work in F1 is achievable, contrary to the popular opinion that it isn’t.
“Even coming to McLaren and going to a different team, we’re competitors on track, but there’s still this sense of solidarity, women in F1, that we’re always going to help each other out. I’ve got friends within other F1 teams I only know through F1, because you’ve got to find those networks and grow those friendships because there aren’t many of us.”
(Amelia’s Account: @the.female.engineer on Instagram)
Image References:
Citations:
FAIRMAN, KATY. "Si.com." Si.com, 6 Nov. 2023, www.si.com/formula1/2023/11/06/mclaren-racing-engineer-amelia-lewis-paving-way-women-motorsports. Accessed 23 Dec. 2023.
"Team Together." The Official McLaren Website – McLaren.com, www.mclaren.com/racing/team/team-together/. Accessed 23 Dec. 2023.
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