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Career Spotlight: Meet Eimear O’Connor, Race Engineer at PREMA Racing
PREMA Racing's Eimear O'Connor has to be ready for anything on the pit wall - even the smallest split-second decision can decide between success and failure.
As Maya Weug’s Race Engineer - and the calm, encouraging and informative voice over the radio - she helped the Ferrari driver deliver her first win last season. We chatted to O'Connor to discuss how she prepares for ever scenario that could lie ahead, how she deals with unpredictability on track and why asking for help is the best way to better yourself.
HOW DO YOU PREPARE FOR A RACE WEEKEND BACK AT THE FACTORY?
“We’ll have team meetings and normally we do the simulator, which is kind of the last step before the weekend. If we’ve been on the track before, you normally pull from the experience that you have before any information you have on your database. But if it’s a completely new track, you need to study any other categories that have been there.
“F2 is also here this weekend (in Yas Marina), so we did a lot of work collaboratively. We’ve raced here with F4 UAE many times, but you also want to try and dissipate how it’s going to be on an F1 weekend and not just at a different point in time where you don’t have these drivers laying down a lot of rubber.
“For this, you do a lot of prep and look at some onboards, look at some data if you have access, put together the notes for the drivers and then, go from there to work on the sim. The sim itself will help to inform you where they are, should there be a different change in approach. But again, that depends on how good you sim is as well, so this is also important.”
WHAT DOES AN AVERAGE WEEKEND LOOK LIKE AT THE TRACK?
“Generally, the first two days are for install. Everything travels with the freight, so it’s not like when we’re back in Italy with F4 where they have the cars in the workshop and you can set them up beforehand. It involves unpacking everything, checking to make sure the cars were okay in transit.
“After that point, you do the setup, scrutineering and everything. It’s a restart every weekend. You can service the cars ahead of time, but you can’t prep the setup ahead of time, especially considering how they have to travel. Everything is very fresh every weekend.
“Then you’ve got the sessions. For that, it’s rinse and repeat where you prepare ahead of the session, do the team meeting with the drivers, do the session, debrief — what worked, what didn’t work and try to figure out a solution. If all goes well, great, you don’t really have too much to do. You just need to be able to repeat it for the next session, but also you need to be anticipating, especially on a weekend like this, where the track is going to go considering you have so many categories running.
“It’s really important to be on top of that because if you make a mistake and don’t anticipate it enough, it can be the difference between being at the top of the Standings or being somewhere else!”
WHAT ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT SKILLS YOU NEED?
“The biggest one is interpersonal skills. This is the thing I think people underestimate , is that it doesn’t make you an engineer to be just super techy. It’s really important that you understand the team working around you and you need to be mindful of that. You need to be aware of where your team is at, at any given point.
"Also, it's how you communicate, making sure that everyone's on the same page, the information is clear, and generally that the atmosphere is quite good and the relationship is quite strong because it's a very high-pressure environment. This is really, really important to actually have a good working relationship with everyone in the team.
“I know there are going to be some stressful moments. Someone says something you don't mean, we all do it, it's normal, it's human, but what's important is that the information flow is clear at all times. This is what helps us because we're on very tight schedules most of the time, so it's really important to try and be as clear as possible in all these aspects.”
WHERE DID YOU WORK BEFORE YOUR CURRENT ROLE?
“I worked in PREMA last year as a Data Engineer in F3. Then before that, my first job in motorsport was with Imperiale Racing, which is a team doing the Italian GT Championship and they’re now doing the World Challenge. I was with them as a Data Engineer, it was my very, very first touch of motorsports — so it was a sink or swim year let’s say!”
WHAT DID YOU STUDY AT SCHOOL OR UNIVERSITY AND HOW DID THAT HELP YOU ON YOUR CAREER PATH?
“I studied at Trinity (College Dublin), I was a mechanic engineer. I hadn’t really followed it before because, for me at least the visibility in Ireland, there’s not so much motorsport and people tend to leave the country for it. You see F1 and for me, I didn’t know if I wanted to be very specific with one certain role. When I actually got to come over and my old team Imperiale said ‘we know you’re a student, we know you’re interested. Do you want to come see what we do?’ I said yeah, absolutely.
“I felt like a lot of the things that you learn in college in terms of the general basics of physics and thermodynamics, that’s very general. What was nice was actually seeing them being applied and how much of a role the engineer has on a level outside of F1 where you’re responsible for a lot more things.
“We can all have a broad technical knowledge, but also that personal side with the driver and that’s really what got me into it. It wasn’t just my studies that helped, but for years I was playing volleyball. The different things of being a coach, a referee, a team player and all of that actually fed in really well and it’s a very well-rounded package before getting there.”
DO YOU HAVE A FAVOURITE PART OF YOUR JOB?
“Given the fact that this calendar is so international, this is something super cool for me. I'm at the very start of my career, it's only the first year I've been a Race Engineer, but what's really nice is actually being thrown into that challenge of having new tracks, different scenarios, a car that I haven't worked with before.
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“That’s what I really like, the challenge it presents every time. I think critical problem solving is one of the things that I like about the job the most. If it was easy all the time, I wouldn't want to be doing it. It definitely isn't, so I think the important part is being able to act on your feet quickly and solve a problem when they come up.”
WHAT’S THE TOUGHEST ASPECT OF YOUR ROLE OR A CHALLENGE THAT PEOPLE MIGHT NOT EXPECT?
“Interpersonal, I’ll link the two back together, I think that's the hardest part. I like working with machines, they’re black and white, that's it. When you have to work with people, it's tough. It's a tough job and everyone has their own roles as well.
“One of the more difficult aspects is also from a driver’s point of view, when things go wrong. With the team and everything, when the mood starts to dip, that's the part that's really difficult because your job is not to get sucked into that. Your job as the Race Engineer is to keep the level here, you need to maintain positivity, you need to always be pushing. No matter what the scenario is, it doesn't matter.
“Take Barcelona as the example, that weekend was super tough. Both of us (her and Maya) don’t want to repeat that weekend but what was important was how we dealt with it. It was one of those scenarios where you’re trying to figure out a problem, you’re trying everything you can and if one thing is working, then it’s not working and the next thing you try isn’t working. It kind of snowballs. The main thing is the mental resilience that you have to have to pull yourself through it and bring the people along with you as well. I think that’s an aspect people underestimate, it’s not easy to be positive all the time.”
ANY CAREER HIGHLIGHTS SO FAR?
“Jeddah was the first time for me as a Race Engineer with F1 ACADEMY. I had done F4 UAE and a few other races in Sepang last year. The first time going to the F1 pit lane and sitting on the pit wall, I think we were in Kick Sauber’s box and that was really cool. All the other engineers acted normally and me, I’m like this is super cool, I get to be in F1.”
IS THERE ANYONE IN MOTORSPORT WHO INSPIRED YOU OR SUPPORTED YOU?
“The team here is super supportive, but the person who got me into motorsport was my old Team Principal at Imperiale. He took a big chance on me because at the time, I was a student. I had no background in the motorsport whatsoever. Apart from being a mechanical engineer, it was a good basis but I knew absolutely zero.
“He was the one that offered me the job to work with them. He only saw me for two weeks as a student. I wasn't actively involved as an engineer, I was purely just there to observe and watch. What he explained to me was that I saw that you were passionate about. He said the technical stuff I can teach you, the passion is something you have to have already. For him, he took a big gamble, taking someone completely fresh into this role, especially being a Data Engineer — you need to be on it straight away. I have a lot to attribute to him for that.”
WHAT HAVE BEEN THE FUNNIEST MOMENTS YOU’VE EXPERIENCED IN THE INDUSTRY?
“One of the funniest, but also, I don’t want to repeat it, was Zandvoort Race 1. It’s a beautiful sunny day, we go out, we’re in the pitlane and it’s very calm. There’s a nice breeze, blue sky and we’re on the grid. Suddenly, it starts getting a bit darker and I look at the radar, there’s a cloud 30km away. This might arrive, but let’s hope we get the race done and dusted out of the way.
“They start doing the formation lap and back on the pit wall, the sky goes dark. The wind picks up from nowhere, I lean back across and I feel these specks of rain, and I hear from Maya that it’s raining really heavy in Sector 3. All of a sudden, all hell breaks loose.
“They’re at the start with the Safety Car in front of the cars, the heavens open and it’s raining cats and dogs. We end up staying on the grid for like 45 minutes in the rain waiting to maybe have the weather clear up a bit to actually race. In the end, it got moved to the next morning and that was funny because you have two races within an hour of each other, which was very rapid fire, but it was fun.”
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WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO YOUR YOUNGER SELF ABOUT EMBARKING ON A CAREER IN MOTORSPORT?
“The main thing is you just have to go for it. When I was younger, I never asked for help, I was really stubbornly independent. I still am very stubbornly independent as anyone here will tell you, but I started to realise that if you get so resistant to asking for help, especially when you’re new. There are people around here who are more than willing to help you, see you grow and help you learn. The thing is you need to actually ask. If anyone comes to me to ask something, I’m always happy to explain.
“You need to do that at the stage where you can be asking questions because there does come a time in the future where you don’t have these engineers around you, you're on your own. It's much better to actually ask for the help at the time that you need it to actually grow. There's no point in wasting time being really stubborn, I'm doing this thing by myself.
“You'll take twice as long, you're not going to learn anything. Maybe you pick up something, but it will probably repeat the same thing again and again. It’s much better to just ask for help, be open to letting others help you and asking others for help. This is definitely big advice I should have listened to maybe two years ago.”