Autosport – 22 August 2019

Travers plays crucial

role monitoring fluids

in Mercedes’ F1 cars

n July last year, as Silverstone sizzled in one of the
hottest summers in recent memory, Petronas used
the British Grand Prix as a platform to announce a
global search for a new trackside fl uid engineer to
join the Mercedes Formula 1 team at every round of
the 2019 season. Over 7000 candidates worldwide threw their hats
into the ring – a remarkable number given the demands of the job.
Working in the cramped environment of the back of a race truck,
the two Petronas trackside fl uid engineers play one of those vital
but unheralded roles in motorsport: continuously monitoring the
functional fl uids in their cars to maintain performance, legality
and reliability. The tools in the small but surgically clean trackside
fl uid lab can reveal the tiniest traces of contamination in the fuel
tank or the early signs of failure in the engine... if the people
using those tools are sharp enough.

Stephanie Travers emerged from more than 7000 entrants to win a place

as a Petronas trackside fluid engineer in F1. And she’s there to stay

STUART CODLING

(^) PHOTOGRAPHY ETHERINGTON FOR MERCEDES-BENZ GRAND PRIX LTD

Helping Mercedes

make fluid progress

I

It’s a tough job. “You’ll do everything you can, even sweeping the

fl oor if you have to, to make sure Lewis [Hamilton] and Valtteri

[Bottas] can go faster,” said Petronas CEO Giuseppe D’Arrigo at

the launch of this year’s search for another new trackside fl uid

engineer to join the inaugural competition’s winning candidate.

Yes, it proved so successful that Petronas is doing it all over again.

Twenty-fi ve-year-old Stephanie Travers has “really raised the

bar” in the role, according to Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff.

And this is only her second job since graduating from Imperial

University in 2017 with an MSc in advanced chemical engineering.

Born in Zimbabwe, Travers moved to the UK at the age of 10

with her family, who settled in Epsom. “I chose my GCSEs to align

with motorsport because I’ve always been a motor racing fan,” she

says. “Watching races with my parents, I travelled to some races

with friends and family, some cousins were in karting and I had

36 AUTOSPORT.COM 22 AUGUST 2019