My name is Carlos Sanchez, I am 25 years old Mechanical Engineer that have been dreaming about being part of Formula 1 since more than 18 years.
For my Motorsports love, everything started on a Sunday morning, when my family and me were sit on the living room watching TV. When changing the program my dad accidentally change to a F1 race. It was Magny-Course and I remember seeing Michael Schumacher flying over the top of the huge kerbs of the last corner of the track. I was really impressed
That produced a change, something inside me encouraged me to say: “Dad please, let me see how it finishes”.
Nobody on my family nor my friends on that time had nothing to do with motorsports or racing so I am proud of saying that my love, my inspiration and my passion about F1 had no external influence. I just found my passion by myself.
18 year later I am at Oxford Brookes University studying an MSc in Motorsport Engineering as a complement to my Bachelor Degree in Mechanical Engineering and my MSc in Machinery and transportation.
I changed my life, I moved from my country, I left there my friends and my family, I left my job and all of that with one objective in mind: Became a Formula One Engineer, my dream.
Since that day, the race weekends became a “religion” to me, sitting in front of the TV and watching the fastest cars in the world competing among each other. Since then, my fascination about the engineering and the technical side of Formula 1 started to grow. Seeing the cars on the pits, with the wheels removed and with dozens of pipes connected to the engine and the radiators, the really small size suspensions holding the wheels “like flying” supported by wishbones that were made of a weave called carbon fibre with a resin, etc; all of that was (and is) really impressive.
This was an amazing discovery for me: a full world of things that I didn’t know and that were what made the cars that I liked to be the fastest cars in the world.
During High School I decided that I wanted to use my free time in understanding better racecar so I expent my time in designing my own RC cars made of Lego Technic (with gearbox, suspension, etc…) taking them to the different terrains to test their reliability and speed and try to improve them.
Later on, this interest in the technical side of Formula 1 made me to start a webpage about technical things in Formula 1. I thought that if I wanted to learn about it I needed to understand it properly and being able to explain it to other people, and why not sharing it on the internet for other people to read about it and discuss about our passion?
When I entered at the university I decided to study a Bachelor in Mechanical Engineering to focus on the motorsports technology. There I discovered what has been without any doubt the best part of my life in motorsports so far: Formula Student.
I could be hours talking about my experiences in FS but if I would need to do a brief summary about it, the following words would be on it for sure: Commitment, Team Work, Learning and Challenging.
In Formula Student you learn how to learn, how to assume a task and become an expert in something that you did not even know what it was to days before, you made mistakes and you learn from there, you learn from the mistakes of others and you support them to solve the problems as a Team.
On my first year of FS I arrived to a team which never had a car built. Me and the rest of the team worked really hard not only in the technical side but on the team attitude side and we ended up with a car competing in Formula Student Spain. It was not a great car at all, but it was the best learning tool I have ever had.
At the end of the season, since I had no enough resources for going to the UK to study motorsports, I started to work at my university as a researcher teaching to the engineering students of 3rd course of Mechanical Engineering about Vehicle Theory meanwhile as part of my job conditions I studied an MSc in machinery and transportation. It was not my passion and it was not apparently related with motorsports but I changed it to orient it to help me to get a bit closer to achieve my dream.
After that I became Chief Engineer and Teamleader of the team, leading the team of the change of concept, when we reduced more than 100 kg the weight of the car, we made our first CFRP sandwich monocoque and we changed to 10” rims. No money, tons of illusion, hunger of learning and improving and passion about racing and motorsports. I was in that position during two years and we designed and manufactured another two cars, focusing on different aspects. On just two years I changed from being an Aero Team member of a new team, to be the Chief Engineer and design the first monocoque of the University Carlos III of Madrid.
Not everything is cool and easy, actually in motorsports nothing is easy. I will never forget the day on which the 2017 car burned out in the workshop the night before going to the race. In just one second, all the hard work of all the team seemed to be for nothing. But we did not gave up, we rebuilt everything damaged in 24 hours and we went to the competition again. There are moments on your journey in motorsports when you have the hardest moments of your life, you get frustrated, you do not get your goals or things just don’t work how you predicted. But this is engineering, this is motorsport and this is the beautiful part of it, learning, teamworking, thinking by yourself and gaining hand on experience on the thing you love the most in the world.
Now I am here, in the best Formula Student Team of the UK, learning from the most amazing team mates I could have desired to have and getting everyday a bit closer to the dream that have driven my life for years: Became part of the Formula 1 World.
See you in the pit lane!
