Today, the Ferrari F1 Engineering Academy, Scuderia Ferrari’s programme aimed at young engineers, starts its seventh year, as confirmed by the Maranello team’s official website.
Its goal is to find and select the best students from several of the most prestigious universities in Italy and the rest of the world, to evaluate and train them, with an eventual goal of joining the Scuderia.
Who are they? Five have been selected for the 2021/2022 academic year: two young women and three young men, of various nationalities, all from universities in England and Italy. Irene Vittori Antisari is Italian and comes from MUNER, the Motorvehicle University of Emilia Romagna, while Nuria Catells is Spanish and has completed a Masters at Oxford Brookes University, which is also where British student Craig Davidson came from and he will join the group in a few weeks. The other two young engineers are Edoardo Barbieri, who graduated from Imperial College London and Oliviero Agnelli, from the Turin Polytechnic.
The selection. The five were chosen from 497 candidates and had to go through several selection phases that gradually whittled down the numbers. 72 of them got through the first stage, based on technical and attitudinal tests and questions linked to Ferrari values. Then 39 of them met with the company’s Human Resources staff for a discussion. This brought the number down to 19 who then tackled a further group assessment, before the ten best had meetings with the relevant GES managers. It was in this final stage that the five were chosen and today they start their adventure with Scuderia Ferrari.
How does it work. For 80% of their time, the F1 Engineering Academy participants work in departments matching their specialism, while the remaining 20% is spent working together on common projects. The young engineers are divided into two macro-groups, one linked to the Power Unit Area, the other to Chassis Area. Each participant works with their team on an assigned task and when it comes to group work, they can count on help from two specially allocated tutors. At the end of their time with the Academy which lasts for six months, up to the end of March 2022, the youngsters will have to present the projects they have worked on to the team. It is an important moment which last year was attended by over a hundred GES staff.
Previously. As mentioned, the Ferrari F1 Engineering Academy is a programme whereby the company can take on some of the most promising young engineers from around the world. Since the programme began, over 40 students have gone on to join Scuderia Ferrari Mission Winnow. Among them, from America, Steven Petrik, who today is Carlos Sainz’s Performance Engineer and Scotsman Calum MacDonald, the Spaniard’s driver coach.
Like on a campus. The company also makes sure the Academy students are fully immersed in what it means to live in Maranello. Human Resources ensures the young engineers are involved in various activities, each one having their own tutor and a person in the department as a point of reference. Furthermore, the non-Italians can take Italian lessons and are helped to integrate into the company and experience Italian culture. They also form a team when it comes to living arrangements, as they are all lodged in the same residence, so that they get to spend time together team building.
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