Over the past few months I’ve been offering my advice on what the best universities are for getting into F1. It’s a common question but a difficult one to answer.
AUTOSPORT magazine and the Williams F1 team have now launched an engineering award where a nominated student is fast tracked through various roles at Williams. The full article is as below but it’s interesting that they have limited their search to what they consider to be “top universities”. Those universities are :
Oxford
Cambridge
Imperial College London
Loughborough
Bath
Southampton
Oxford Brookes
Queens University, Belfast
As is clear, all of those are in the UK which is not necessarily to say that universities outside of the UK do not meet F1 standards but these ones are a known quantity and both Williams and AUTOSPORT are UK based.
I am sure that many successful F1 people have studied from outside of that group but I can’t disagree with any of those institutions put forward as I rate them all very highly. I may even have attended one of them myself..,
Full details of the scheme below and at :
http://autosport.com/news/report.php/id/117068/williams-autosport-launch-new-award
AUTOSPORT and the Williams Formula 1 team have launched a new award that will fast-track an engineering student into F1.
The AUTOSPORT Williams Engineer of the Future Award will be presented at the annual AUTOSPORT Awards each December from 2015.
A joint Williams and AUTOSPORT judging panel will select the winner from a list of engineering student nominees provided by leading universities Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial, Loughborough, Bath, Southampton, Oxford Brookes and Queens University, Belfast, with the contenders undergoing an assessment process at the Williams factory.
The award recipient will go onto a two-year accelerated development programme with Williams, which will include experience with the F1 race team and at a grand prix, rotating through various roles in the company and receiving mentorship from senior engineers before they find their specialism.
“We’re looking for the next Ross Brawn or Adrian Newey – someone way above average,” said Williams chief technical officer Pat Symonds.
“The winner will be under my direct supervision, and I’ll be taking a very close interest in what they’re doing.”
The new scheme was launched on stage at the 2014 AUTOSPORT Awards by Williams deputy team principal Claire Williams and race driver Valtteri Bottas.