NASCAR Performance Engineer

NASCAR Performance Engineer

Requirements

• Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering, Physics, or related subject.
• Experience with automotive projects/vehicle performance/amateur motorsports including Formula SAE or similar College project teams, late model, sprint, autocross or track day driving and car preparation.
• Basic understanding of vehicle dynamics and vehicle performance, experience analyzing vehicle and driver behavior to improve performance.
• Proficient programming in Python, MATLAB, C#, or similar language.
• Strong organization skills, forward thinking mentality, a superb attention to detail and exceptional work ethic and integrity.
• A driven, self-starter with an ability to develop solutions autonomously while still collaborating with the team.

Responsibilities

• Support GM Motorsports NCS Teams with vehicle performance insights.
• Mine prior event data for performance trends, analyzing series-provided telemetry, timing and scoring data, and derived metrics from GM Motorsports race strategy tools.
• Utilize vehicle simulation tools, both offline and DIL simulator, to characterize event specific sensitivities and derive favorable vehicle configuration directions and setup recommendations.
• Correlate vehicle models, comparing logged track data with model output and develop relationships between performance and handling metrics and driver-perceived vehicle behavior.
• Convey findings in regular written reports distributed to GM NASCAR NCS Teams.
• Actively review quality of correlation, accuracy of previous recommendations, and process bottlenecks/weaknesses to identify areas of future enhancement.
• Conceptualize and develop methods improvements and new tools to address identified issues and add value to customer race teams.
• Brainstorm new ways of achieving greater performance in targeted areas.
• Provide engineering support for rig and track tests, developing test plans, performing data analysis, and teaching team personnel to use tools and interpret simulation output.
• Travel to occasional NCS events to support at-track engineering efforts.
• Collaborate with Performance group members supporting other series to transfer learnings and adopt most useful analysis and reporting methods developed across the group.
• Coordinate with other internal GM Motorsports groups to share information, build knowledge base, and assist in collaboratively advancing support program.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience analyzing on-track performance through both application vehicle dynamics principles and statistical methods.
• Knowledge of race car setup, event preparation, technical inspection, race procedures and race strategy.
• Proficiency in Motorsports data analysis software including Pi Toolbox, Atlas, Motec or similar.
• Experience in modeling and simulation using Dymola/Modelica, ADAMS, CFD codes or similar.