The MIA School of Race Engineering has a strong motorsport engineering community. When you join the School you become part of this community and have access to the top engineers in the world. Below you can explore all our experts who have provided their expert knowledge as tutors at either our 4-day School or online modules.
Tutors
Head of Performance Analysis
James Knapton - Head of Performance Analysis
James Knapton has enjoyed a rich career in Formula 1. He has worked for 7 different F1 teams including Jordan Grand Prix, Midland F1 and Spyker F1 and has been Head of Vehicle Science at Force India, Sauber, Manor Racing and Red Bull Advanced Technologies where he worked on the Aston Martin Valkyrie project. James is now working as Head of Performance Analysis for Cadillac F1 team.
Technical Director ‑ Performance
Ciaron Pilbeam - Technical Director ‑ Performance
Ciaron has a wealth of experience in race engineering, having worked as a Race Engineer in F1 for over 15 years. In that time he has worked for five different F1 teams, including the likes of BAR Honda, Red Bull Racing, Lotus F1 Team, McLaren Racing and now Alpine F1 Team. He has been the Head of Trackside Engineering, where he managed both driver’s trackside engineering teams and helps to make decisions on set-up, strategy and tyre management. Ciaron has recently been promoted to Technical Director (Performance) at BWT Alpine F1 Team.
Motorsports Director
Mark Preston - Motorsports Director
With a degree in Mechanical Engineering, Mark joined Arrows Grand Prix and McLaren F1 before creating the Super Aguri F1 team with Honda, in just 100 days. Mark recently delivered five ABB FIA Formula E (World Championship) Teams and Drivers Championship and is the most successful Team Principal in Formula E. Mark’s new role at Lola Cars is to build the future of this iconic racing brand. They will focus on new “energy carriers” being developed for powertrains of the future with three pillars of battery electric, hydrogen and synthetic fuels.
Deputy Technical Director
Dominic Harlow - Deputy Technical Director
Dominic is part of the engineering team at the FIA who are developing F1 regulations. He has also worked for BMW in DTM, Williams F1 and Force India as well as other leading Race Engineering roles.
Head of Driver Academy
Guillaume Rocquelin - Head of Driver Academy
Rocky began his motorsport career at Reynard Racing cars in 1993, after which he moved to the US as Senior Race Engineer for Newman/Haas Racing in CART/IndyCar. In 2006 he joined Red Bull Racing where he race engineered David Coulthard and later Sebastian Vettel, contributing to Red Bull’s four consecutive world championships. In 2015 he was promoted to Head of Race Engineering.
Senior Aero Science & Technology Aerodynamicist
Paula Garcia Ruiz - Senior Aero Science & Technology Aerodynamicist
Paula started her career as a Junior development Aerodynamicist at Williams Racing. Paula is now working as an Aero Science and Technology Aerodynamicist for Alpine F1 Team and works on developing new systems and technologies to enhance the performance of the Formula 1 car.
Tyre Science engineer
Antonis Palaskas - Tyre Science engineer
Antonis Palaskas holds a diploma in Mechanical Engineering from Greece and a masters in Motorsport Engineering from Oxford Brookes university. Currently, he works as Tyre Science engineer in the Vehicle Dynamics department of Williams Racing F1. In his previous job he was a Tyre Engineer for Jaguar TCS Racing in the Formula E championship.
McLaren F1 Team
Nicholas Cooper - Head of Tyre Modelling & Analysis
Nick started his motorsport career as a Tyre Engineer with Honda F1 after earning his PhD in Vehicle Dynamics. He stayed with the Brackley based team through it’s years as Brawn F1 and then Mercedes F1, contributing to multiple world championships. In 2018 he moved to McLaren F1 to lead the tyre group. His focus and interests are in understanding tyre behaviour, how to model tyres and integrate them in to simulation tools and how to optimise vehicle behaviour through all aspect of tyre performance.
Tyre Performance Engineer
Andrea Rostagno - Tyre Performance Engineer
Andrea is a motorsport enthusiast who specialises in vehicle dynamics and tyre performance. He has a theoretical background developed through research projects coupled with the practical knowledge he has acquired through 2 years trackside tyre engineering experience in MotoGP with Aprilia Racing. In 2021 Andrea secured a job with Alpine F1 as a trackside performance engineer.
Race Strategy Analyst
Guillaume Ducreux - Race Strategy Analyst
Guillaume joined Alpine F1 Team as a full-time Strategy Engineer, assisting car strategists in simulations before progressing to the role of car strategist. Guillaume now works at Oracle Red Bull Racing as a Race Strategy Analyst.
Aero Performance Engineer
Marco D'Isanto - Aero Performance Engineer
Marco graduated from University of Naples Federico II with a MSc in Aerospace Engineering and a major in Computational Fluid Dynamics. He started his journey into Motorsport as Wind Tunnel Engineer at Dallara, while also spending his weekends as Data Engineer in amateurish racing series.
Race Engineer
Craig Porley - Race Engineer
Craig’s motorsport experience stretches to nearly 20 years. Starting off as a composite technician back in 2004, Craig moved to Xtrac as an R&D Engineer and then Red Bull Racing as a Test Engineer where he ran programs on chassis, suspension and aerodynamic components. Alongside his full time work, Craig has also been a Senior Data Engineer, winning the 2011 FIA GT1 drivers championship, and a Race Engineer for several BTCC teams where he won the independent drivers and team title in 2019. Now, he race engineers for Laser Tools Racing with WSR in BTCC and has set up his own engineering consultancy.
Lead WRC Development Engineer
Tim Jackson - Lead WRC Development Engineer
Tim spent 6 years as a works Rally Engineer for the Ford World Rally Team, securing 2 FIA Manufacturers titles, before spearheading M-Sport's US & Europe rallycross programs. Now back in the WRC, he heads up the test and development of M-Sport Ford's WRC projects.
BTCC Race Engineer
Jenner Collins - BTCC Race Engineer
Jenner’s motorsport career began in 1997 volunteering for multiple Australian motorsport teams, including Volvo Racing Australia. After moving to the UK, he worked as a Wind Tunnel Technician at Jaguar Racing F1 and then Williams F1. He joined Wirth Research in 2006, whilst studying for a BEng in Motorsport. Working his way up from R&D engineer to the Head of the department, motorsport projects included LMP1, Indycar and F1. In 2014 he set up his own prototype vehicle development agency, Collins Limited. Since 2019 he’s Race Engineered for West Surrey Racing, Motorbase Performance and Team HARD, winning multiple races.
Senior Strategy Engineer
Andrew Steel - Senior Strategy Engineer
After studying an MSc in Aerospace Engineering at the University of Manchester, Andrew began his career at Jaguar Land Rover as a Graduate Engineer. During this time he completed a variety of placements, including 10 months at the Panasonic Jaguar Racing Formula E team. In 2020, he joined the Aston Martin F1 team as a Strategy Engineer where he helps develop strategy tools and support the trackside team during race weekends.
Product Manager
Oliver Basey-Fisher - Product Manager
Oliver’s passion for motorsport led him to become a semi-professional racing driver where he competed nationally and internationally in a variety of GT championships. After his racing career he studied computer science and joined SBG in 2021. Pairing his driving expertise and software knowledge he has helped develop RaceWatch, an advanced Race Strategy software tool used by race winning teams across the world.
Technical Director
Charles Hamm – Technical Director
Charles became a Performance and Race Engineer in 2014 and has been racing Porsche GT’s ever since. In 2019 and 2015 he won the GTLM Team, Driver and Manufacturer championships in the Weathertech Sports Car series and was also the GTLM class winner at the 2014 24hrs of Daytona. From 2018-2020 his team won the Sebring 12 Hours GTLM class 3 times in a row. Now, he is Technical Director at Hardpoint Motorsports, running Porsche GT’s in 3 different IMSA championships.
Former Race Engineer
Steve Bunkhall - Former Race Engineer
Steve Bunkhall originally trained as a chemist and in 1988 joined Lola Cars as a project manager where he was responsible for car instrumentation, data acquisition and wind tunnel testing. Since 1993 he has worked as a freelance Race Engineer, at first in Super Touring and DTM with Opel before moving on to specialise in sports cars, notably Ferrari GTE’s. He has engineered cars to victories in FIA GT, WEC and all versions of the ACO Le Mans Series championships.
Race Engineer
Geoff Dymott - Race Engineer
Geoff has worked for Williams Racing for over 20 years in a variety of roles including Vehicle Dynamics, Race / Test Data Engineer and Senior Performance Engineer. Starting his own consultancy in 2019, Geoff has also been a Race Engineer in British F4, Porsche Carrera Cup GB for Richardson Racing and more recently Century Motorsport in British GT.
Race Driver
Callum Cripps - Race Driver
Callum has been involved in motorsport since he was 10 years old. He has raced in Ginetta GT5, Clio Cup, Formula Renault, GT and NASCAR. In 2019 he finished 5th in the EuroNASCAR championship with 50% podium finishes.
Senior R&D Engineer
Harry Stanton - Senior R&D Engineer
Harry graduated from the University of Sheffield in 2020 with a Masters in Mechanical Engineering. Later that year he joined Xtrac as an R&D Engineer where he is involved in several motorsport transmission projects.
Race Engineer
Rob Sharp - Race Engineer
Rob has worked as a Data and Race Engineer in a number of championships including WEC, Carrera Cup, BTCC and British GT. He joined Multimatic in 2021 as a Vehicle Dynamics Engineer where he operated the Kinematic and Compliance Rig as well as the 4 Post Rig and Driver in the Loop Simulator. He is now a race engineer in GTWC and WEC.
Head of Race Strategy
Peter Hall - Head of Race Strategy
Peter graduated from the University of Cambridge with a MSc in Aerospace and Aerothermal Engineering in 2014. After graduating, he worked at Red Bull Racing as a Simulation and Modelling Engineer and then switched to Sauber F1 Team as a Race Strategist. In 2020, he joined Aston Martin F1 Team where he now heads up the Race Strategy department.
Principal Aerodynamicist
Matthew Schofield - Principal Aerodynamicist
Matt has 15 years of aerodynamic development experience, having worked for Alpha Tauri, McLaren and Sauber F1 teams through various changes of regulations in both aerodynamics and CFD. He is currently working for Red Bull Advanced Technologies on a broad range of projects.
Aerodynamic Performance Engineer
Matthew Bate - Aerodynamic Performance Engineer
Matthew Bate completed an MEng in Aeronautics & Astronautics at The University of Southampton. His first job was in the Aerospace sector at Rolls-Royce on the engineering graduate scheme where he completed a number of different placements covering thermodynamics, manufacturing, design, optimisation and aerodynamics. Matthew then took on a full time Performance Engineer role at Rolls-Royce designing, simulating and optimising novel propulsion systems. Matthew now works at Alpine F1 as an Aerodynamic Performance Engineer, analysing on-track data and correlating this to the WT/CFD domains.
Race Engineer
Matt Stratton - Race Engineer
Matt’s aim has always been to work as a Race Engineer in motorsport, he focused all his early education and work experience on the goal. After graduating with a Masters in Mechanical Engineering from Loughborough University he went back to Ilmor Engineering as a Design Engineer, having completed my Placement year with the same company. He then joined Alpine F1 team in the Powertrain team, again as a Design Engineer, but hoping to work his way across to a more Performance Engineering focused role. In March 2023 he started work as a Race Engineer in the Spanish F4 Championship with Rodin Carlin before progressing up to the FIA F3 team for 2024. Working trackside has been a realisation of his dreams growing up and he am loving my current role, completing the MIA School of Race Engineering in 2021 was a very beneficial step in this journey!
Race Engineer
Leigh Pettipas - Race Engineer
Leigh has 18 years experience implementing strategy in the world’s most important endurance contests, including LeMans 24h, Daytona 24h, Sebring 12h and Petit LeMans 10h. He has spent the previous 8 seasons with Texas-based Ferrari GT luminaries Risi Competizione, past winner of each of these marquee races. Leigh is also the principal figure in Sensory Motorsport, a full-service race shop with a focus on Trans Am TA2 cars.
Lead Race Engineer
Brad Goldberg - Lead Race Engineer
Brad has over 21 years of experience for Chip Ganassi Racing. The last 14 years he has been the Lead Race Engineer for programs competing in WEC, IMSA, and Indycar. He has a wealth of knowledge of Race Strategy and the unique challenges competing in the Indycar Series.
Head of Aerodynamic Services
James Eddison - Head of Aerodynamic Services
James has over 25 years’ experience in motorsport engineering. James started his aerodynamics career with Tyrrell working within a small design group. He then progressed through Jordan GP, Renault F1 through to Sauber where he works today as Head of Aerodynamic Services, which includes offering F1 aero development methods to customers, including wind tunnel testing.
Senior Specialist, Vehicle Dynamics Engineer
Matthew Brown - Senior Specialist, Vehicle Dynamics Engineer
Matthew graduated from Imperial College London with an MEng in Aeronautical Engineering in 2014. After graduating, he has worked in Vehicle Dynamics and Simulator groups for Red Bull Racing and Mercedes AMG F1. In 2023 he started at the McLaren F1 team as a Senior Specialist, Vehicle Dynamics Engineer.
Senior Engine Engineer
Liam Litle - Senior Engine Engineer
Liam has 19 years experience of powertrain engineering for M-Sport. In 2020 it was announced that M-Sport will provide the BTCC engine. Liam looks after this programme and is currently a senior engine engineer.
Graduate Aero Performance Engineer
Michael Leonard - Graduate Aero Performance Engineer
Michael joined Cadillac F1 team as an Aero Performance Engineer in 2023 after graduating from Loughborough University with MEng Automotive Engineering. During this time he worked for Racing Point and Aston Martin Formula 1 Team for a total of 18months - spending time in Aerodynamics, R&D and Vehicle Performance.
Trackside energy management engineer
Albert Ruiz Garcia - Trackside energy management engineer
Albert's motorsport career started with MSc in Motorsport Mechatronics at Cranfield University. After that, he started as a junior performance and strategy engineer in FE team Rokit Venturi Racing (Maseratti as of this season). He then moved to Andretti FE. Currently, Albert's role is a Trackside energy management engineer which, among other things, focuses on optimizing energy consumption and efficiency by working closely with the drivers.
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