OWEN HEANEY

CLASS OF 2014

Williams Racing (Formula 1)

I started watching F1 in 2010, while in my third year at Belfast High School. Almost immediately the sport grabbed me, but for a long time it never occurred to me that someone like me could work in an industry like that; it seemed a world away. Luckily for me, the staff at BHS encouraged me to go for it, so I applied for the best universities available and took the plunge. Without that individual encouragement, I may not have realised that this path was available to me.

After leaving school in 2014, I went on to study Mechanical Engineering at Imperial College London, and while at university I was very fortunate to be offered a year in industry working at Red Bull Racing, which gave me my first “foot in the door” of the motorsport industry. It also proved to me that F1 was the career I wanted to pursue. When I returned to Imperial, I applied for and won the Autosport Williams Engineer of the Future Award, the prize for which included a 2-year graduate role at Williams Racing, one of F1’s most historic teams.

I started at Williams in September 2019 and after finishing my graduate rotation was offered a permanent role at the team. I am currently working in the driver-in-the-loop simulator as a Vehicle Dynamics Engineer, helping run sessions with the race drivers to develop the car and improve on-track performance. My role also involves helping a lot with development of the simulator itself, developing new vehicle models and software to improve the realism of the simulation and improve the efficiency of our testing.

It is a very challenging but enjoyable role that involves a huge variety of skills, requiring knowledge of fundamental vehicle dynamics principles, as well as advanced computer modelling techniques and a whole range of software and technology that is required to make a modern F1 simulator work. Every day brings a brand-new challenge, whether that’s working out which setup option from the race engineer is fastest, quickly diagnosing and fixing issues with the simulator itself mid-session, or working out how we can do what we do that little bit better next time. I’m also very fortunate to work with a brilliant group of engineers who are both extremely good at what they do and very pleasant to work with!

I consider myself extremely fortunate to be able to work my dream job; there are days that you’ve just got to pinch yourself because you can’t quite believe that you’re actually being paid to do what you’re doing! That said, there are also tough days where it seems that nothing is going your way, but when the lights go out at the track on a Sunday afternoon and you know you’ve made your own small contribution to that, it’s a very special feeling.

My advice to anyone starting out in the world is that you should never think that just because of who you are or where you’re from, that a path isn’t open to you. You might not end up achieving your dream, but I can guarantee you that you won’t if you never try.