In conjunction with the Motorsport Industry Association (MIA), and National Motorsport Week 2012, M-Sport – the company behind Ford’s assault on the World Rally Championship (WRC) since 1997 – will open its doors for students to attend a unique engineering seminar on Monday 2 July.
Established by the Motor Sports Association (MSA) and MIA, National Motorsport Week 2012 runs from 30 June to 8 July – a high profile period for the sport featuring both the Goodwood Festival of Speed and the Formula 1 Santander British Grand Prix.
M-Sport has a long history of supporting emerging talent and this special seminar aims to provide prospective engineers with an insight in to what careers are available within the UK motorsport industry.
Following a behind-the-scenes tour of the company’s state-of-the-art facilities at Dovenby Hall in Cumbria, attendees will have the opportunity to put their questions to one of the team’s experienced rally engineers in the Ford World Rally Team hospitality unit.
The seminar is open to all engineering students, regardless of course or level. But with places limited to just 20 spaces, those wishing to attend should register their interest via an email to enquiries@m-sport.co.uk detailing why they should be selected.
Registrations close at 12 noon on Tuesday 26 June, and selected attendees will be informed via email no later than Thursday 28 June.
For more information: www.gomotorsport.net orwww.nationalmotorsportweek.co.uk.
Scarbsf1's Blog 
Having worked as a design engineer for a factory sports prototype team in the past I’m always a bit suspicious of the motives behind efforts by big race teams (like those in F1) to attract college engineering interns or new grads. Just like me, many of these bright, young, ambitious, inexperienced engineering grads dream of working for an F1 team. At first, I was just happy to have an engineering job in racing. But after about two seasons, the prospect of continuing to work 60 hour weeks for minimum wage lost its appeal, so I moved on.
For every engineering job opening in F1 there are probably at least 200 applicants. So the big teams have the pick of the crop, and can get away with working them like slaves and paying them small salaries. And if they complain, there are 100 others waiting to take their place. That’s the thing that irked me most about working as a low level design engineer in racing. The team management knew they could get away with paying young engineers dirt wages. I reported directly to the team’s chief engineer, but his salary was about eight times what I was paid.
However, I must admit the work was definitely interesting.
Maybe its different where you are but in America that’s pretty much how every entry level job works.
Anyone else invited to the seminar on Monday? Not the easiest place to get to by public transport but I’ll survive. Should be an interesting day! Thanks Scarbs for publicising the event on twitter, that’s how I became aware of it. Cheers.