COMPETITION WINNERS REACT TO ATTAINING COVETED F1 ENGINEERING ROLES

Two of the winners have Formula SAE experience on their side.

MAKING THE LEAP FROM FORMULA SAE TO FORMULA ONE is beyond any engineering student's wildest dreams, but that will be reality for a pair of students from the University of Maryland and the University of Southern California (USC). Eric LaRoche (SAE Student Associate, 2014), a recent graduate of the University of Maryland from Hamilton Square, NJ, and Jason Zide (SAE Student Affiliate, 2013), a senior at USC from Laguna Beach, CA, along with William Priest from Chesham, Buckinghamshire, U.K., were selected as winners of the Infiniti Performance Engineering Academy, earning a year work placement with four-time Formula One World Champions Infiniti Red Bull Racing.

Emerging from an initial field of 1500 applicants who were asked to answer the question: “What future technology should Formula One be incorporating to keep road-relevant?,” LaRoche, Zide, and Priest were selected for the next round of Skype interviews before being named to the group of 12 finalists invited to attend a three-day shootout event at Infiniti's European Technical Center at Cranfield, England, and at Infiniti Red Bull Racing's factory in Milton Keynes, England.