Young Aussie hits F1 big-time

At just 21 years old, Jaden Partridge knows he is already living the dream.

Ever since he started racing go-karts at the age of 13 with his dad, he’s wanted to work in top-flight motorsport engineering and today he’s working at Renault Sport F1 under the guidance of Michael Schumacher’s former race engineer, Chris Dyer.

The Queensland University of Technology student is the first Australian to secure a position on a ground-breaking 12-month intern program with the Infiniti Engineering Academy in the UK.

The year-long program will see Jaden spend six months with the Renault Sport Formula One team in Enstone, Oxfordshire and the remainder of the year at the Infiniti Technical Centre in Cranfield, Bedfordshire.

Jaden is one of just seven students from around the world who will participate in the Academy this year, having beaten around 1000 students from across the Asia Pacific region for his place.

Worldwide, more than 4000 engineering students competed for the opportunity to join the Infiniti Engineering Academy and entrant application numbers are expected to rise even higher in 2017.

motoring.com.au spoke exclusively with Jaden and the Infiniti Engineering Academy mentoring team during a tour of Infiniti’s engineering facility and Renault Sport’s F1 HQ.

Bright Spark
Although many motorsport fans harbour dreams of becoming a racing driver, Jaden Partridge’s experience in grassroots motoring, first with go-karting and later with Formula Ford, has helped him to realise that his ultimate dream isn’t becoming the next Daniel Ricciardo but the next Ross Brawn.

“Although driving was a lot of fun, I was much more enjoying playing with the set-up of the car and optimising the performance. I wanted to do engineering, but not just any engineering, I wanted to do engineering in motorsport,” he said.

Partridge is one of the most driven young people you’ll meet. The QUT student from Brisbane is studying for a degree in mechanical engineering with lofty ambitions matched with drive and determination. He is also a fan of healthy competition and clearly loves a challenge.

“My go-kart was made a year before I was born whereas most of my competitors were racing karts in their thousands [of dollars]. In motorsport typically the attitude is the newest is the best and fastest.

" And so it was quite satisfying to be rubbing wheels with someone in a $6000 kart when you know you picked yours up for $500 and restored it to as good a condition as you can afford.”

Ever the healthy competitor, Partridge knows the world of elite motorsport is a tough environment in which to succeed and along with his six high-achieving student colleagues from around the world, he is being pushed to develop real solutions for real challenges.

“Now that I’m here, I’m treating this like two six-month-long job interviews, where we can display our skills, show what we have to offer and add value.”

Diversity the key
The Infiniti Engineering Academy was established three years ago as a recruitment initiative for Infiniti to compete with automotive companies to recruit the brightest and best talent from around the world.

Led by Infiniti Motorsport Global Director, Tommaso Volpe, the initiative is the first to split a traditional engineering intern year between the world of automotive and that of Formula 1 so that learnings can be taken from each area of the business and applied to the other.

Volpe is an enthusiastic advocate for the Academy which recruits talent from seven key sales regions around the globe.

“We considered it an opportunity to bring value for engineering students from everywhere in the world to have an experience in Formula 1 and automotive and we wanted to leverage our global footprint,” said Volpe, who says the students are also encouraged to share their learnings with each other and across both the automotive and motorsport businesses.

Taking part in this year’s Academy are students from Australia, China, Canada, USA, Italy, Mexico and the UAE. The students are split into two groups and share housing and the use of a company car.

It’s an immersive experience which Volpe says gives the students work experience and invaluable exposure to other cultures which he says will also enhance diversity at Infiniti.

“Generally speaking we are not just looking for technically skilled students. The reason why we run this program everywhere in the world is that we want to have diversity in the group of people that we hire.

“It’s diversity which at the moment is quite lacking in Formula 1 because it’s a global sport but it’s pretty much a Europe-centric industry.”

No PR stunt
Far from being a cultural exchange or just a glossy promotional program for Infiniti, the Academy is allowing the students to make a direct contribution to the areas in which they are working.

“The two facilities where they work are not theoretical R&D facilities," said Volpe.

“Formula 1 doesn’t spend any money on something that doesn’t help the car to go faster and Infiniti technical centre is not our R&D facility in Japan, so they test real products. From day one they are working on real products -- this is not a training program.”

To that end, Jaden’s is assisting the Renault Sport F1 team in the area of performance optimisation by developing track maps for modelling simulations.

The car is modelled and before each race its performance is simulated to look at a range of parameters to see what impact they will have on the car’s speed.  Following a grand prix, the team then looks at how close the simulations were and makes modifications to the simulations to suit.

“I really like it as it is really big-picture. You’re looking at the car as a whole system and modifying sub systems to see how it affects the whole," said Partridge.

“For me also, the Academy is pretty amazing. We’re just students and we have the potential to bring together two very large industries, both automotive and motorsport. To have an active role in developing synergies between those industries is really rewarding.”

Judging by his enthusiasm for the role, it is quite possible to believe that Partridge wears his ear-to-ear grin in his sleep. And who could blame him when he’s already living his dream?

Applications are now open for the 2017-2018 Infiniti Engineering Academy program. To find out more and apply, visit academy.infiniti.com.