What is Race Engineering?

I've been wondering this for a very long time. What is Race Engineering and what does it take to be a Race Engineer? How many engineers work on a team? What do they do?

connections, or a DAMN good job at a car company and connections. well that's if you're talking about professional racing, i don't really know about amateur or semi-professional racing. they probably have about the same number of people on one car as they do on a design team for a commercial car, but probably more. so a team of people for aerodynamics, a team for suspension, a team for various parts of the engine, etc. lots of people but it's almost hopeless to even think about getting on something like a formula 1 engineering team because you need some good connections.

what they do: improve every aspect of the car. they'll see how they can improve airflow on each little spoiler, how their position affects drag and downforce, all kinds of small things. they also do the tuning for the car, minute suspension changes, tire pressure changes, wing adjustments, that kind of thing. the only people on the team that aren't engineers are the owners, drivers, and pit crew, and even some of those are engineers.

i would love to do that as a job, i've dreamt about it but i've never seriously considered it. there are so many people that want to do those jobs that you really need something special to set you apart.

I had this crazy idea, become a race engineer for small race series, travel around, at the same time as learning to race, getting seat time, and eventually I would be an ideal to get some pro ride with all the knowledge of my car and the seat time I get. If I couldn't make it racing somewhere, I could fall back on working as an engineer. Now that's my hybrid dream job.

if you do get into mechanical engineering (or some other stream but mech is prefered) you can see if your school has a formula SAE team. they scratch-build a race car out of stuff like carbon fiber and aluminum. the max engine displacement is 600cc, and these things go FAST. i've heard of some of them doing sub 3sec 0-60, they're nothing to joke about. this way you learn about designing a car, building it, tuning it, and you might be able to race it. i'm gonna be joining up next year, i forgot to this year.

That sucks man, good luck for next year!! One of my friends Ryan tells me about the Formula SAE car they're building at RPI, but I have no chance to get in there, not enough money. Lots of schools does this, lots of videos on youtube of building and racing them, and they have a races against other schools. I didn't know it was that fast, but knowing it's a formula car (albeit short) it's born fast.

Is Race Engineering another field or do REs have mech eng. degrees?

i've never heard of race engineering, i think a racing engineer is just an engineer that works on a racing team, meaning that someone with a degree in mech eng can be a race engineer as well as someone in elec eng.

What about a field called Mechatronics? I researched that it's a blend of mechanical/computer science and electrical. Think designing robots but I'm sure it has tons of applications.

What about a field called Mechatronics? I researched that it's a blend of mechanical/computer science and electrical. Think designing robots but I'm sure it has tons of applications.

Most of the industry will go "huh?" and toss your CV in the rubbish bin.

A mechanical engineering degree already has electrical and software components in it. But people everywhere know what it is.