While the Mazda drivers get a lot of attention here with the weekly BEHIND THE ZOOM blog, they couldn’t do what they do without the entire team behind them. This week. we get some superb advice from Marcus Shen, the chief engineer for SpeedSource, Mazda’s factory Prototype team. He tells how he “stumbled across” motorsports and hasn’t looked back since.
As we prepare to celebrate another Fourth of July weekend and commemorate the historic beginning of our great nation, I thought it would be fitting to take a look back at my beginnings in motorsports, as it is often the question I am most asked.
I went into college at the University of Florida with the goal of studying mechanical engineering. Having always been interested in finding out how things worked, it was a natural fit. Once there, I stumbled across the Society of Automotive Engineers while walking through campus one day. The team had their newest Formula car on display and was looking to recruit new members. I was immediately hooked.
As the ‘new guy,’ it was my responsibility to learn and shadow the older team members and to absorb as much knowledge as possible. Relatively early, I took an affinity towards vehicle dynamics and chassis design. I was intrigued in how engineers could seemingly cook up the handling and balance of a race car; so, as the years went by, I eventually moved into the lead vehicle dynamics designer role.
Throughout my senior year of schooling, I worked part-time with SpeedSource. Team owner Sylvain Tremblay was looking to ramp up his in-house engineering capabilities, and I was given the opportunity to showcase my skills. SpeedSource’s acquisition of two Mazak CNC machines in 2007 meant they needed someone to design and program parts for manufacturing. Having had a background in mechanical design and manufacturing meant this was the perfect fit for me.
My advice to young engineers looking to make a break in motorsports:
– First, work hard. Be willing to put in that extra effort that is going to set you apart.
– Second, be humble. Understand that you can’t possibly ‘know everything’ and be accepting to the fact that there is still a tremendous amount for you to learn.
– Lastly, try to be involved with a Formula SAE program. It is possibly the easiest and most meaningful way of gaining practical hands-on experience outside of a classroom.
Having the opportunity to design and build a race car from the ground up (or five cars to be exact) cannot be replaced by any text book or classroom curriculum. It is this experience of trying to innovate, failing to accomplish my goals, and rebounding to improve on past mistakes that have served as the basis of my professional engineering career. To this day, I still use many of the engineering principals learned in my time participating in FSAE.
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