Motorsport has long been seen as a male dominated arena – but it isn’t always the case as explained in the latest column for Carlin Motorsport…
Michelle Quaife – F3 team manager:
I’m Michelle Quaife, and I’m the team manager for the Carlin F3 team. I’ve been involved in motorsport since I was very young as my dad was an engineer and my brother Phil races as well. Three years ago, I worked for the VLR team, and then I went to SRO, who are the organisers of both the F3 and GT championships. When Trevor then offered me a job, I couldn’t refuse, and I moved to Carlin to take up my current job.
It’s a busy role and, while the team relies hugely on the engineers, the drivers and all of the mechanics that work hard all week, my job is to do all the logistics – things like sorting the accommodation and travel - and make sure that everyone knows where to be and when. In short, I have to make sure everything runs smoothly throughout the weekend.
About twenty people work for Carlin during a race weekend, and that’s before you start introducing family sponsors and the drivers themselves. Dealing with the drivers is quite a full time occupation, each of them are very different in their characters and in how they respond to how well they have done out on track. My job is to make sure they sign on and go to driver’s briefings and that they are there when they are needed by the engineers and the mechanics. You just have to learn how to deal with them if they have a bad session and in a foul mood!
Some are far harder to deal with than others when they have had a bad session, and I have to treat them like friends. I just have to say ‘come on, we’ve got to go off and do this’ and try not to bring up what has happened out in qualifying or out in the race. I don’t sit there and say ‘oh, what did you do wrong’ or anything like that. I just try to be with them as a friend and take them to the driver’s briefing and deal with that.
Vicky Callaghan - #2 mechanic, Oli Jarvis
I’m Vicky, and I work in the Carlin team the number two mechanic for Oliver Jarvis, who joined the F3 team at the start of the season. I got into this job after doing a degree in Motorsport Engineering at university about four years ago, before moving on to gain experience in Formula Ford and then Formula
BMW. I joined Carlin about a year ago and moved up another step into F3.
