THIS MONTH
Delphine Biscaye
Competition Manager, F1 Academy
Pitched at Formula 4 level, F1 Academy launched earlier this year to offer female drivers a bridge from karting to single-seaters and inspire more young women to get involved in motorsport – on or off the track. It’s a journey the series’ competition manager is very familiar with…
CV
2023
Competition manager, F1 Academy
2016-2022
Team manager, Maserati MSG Racing/ ROKiT Venturi Racing
2011-2016
Design engineer/project manager, Venturi Automobiles
2008-2009
R&D engineer/detail design engineer, Williams F1
2005-2009
Engineering diploma, Institut Français de Mécanique Avancée
GP Racing: You’ve spoken in other interviews about how challenging it was to get into motor racing. What were the biggest obstacles?
Delphine Biscaye: I want to say it wasn’t that difficult – but, when I think about it, it was! It took a lot of perseverance – bothering people, basically. The challenge was to not stop before getting into it. Nobody in my family had done engineering, nor were they interested in motorsports. And actually I still wasn’t sure what I wanted to do when I went to the interview for engineering school – but, as I was sitting in the waiting room, motorsport was all the other students there were talking about. So when they asked me in the interview, “Why do you want to study mechanical engineering?” I said, “Because I want to work in motorsport.” And that’s when they said, “Well, there’s very few jobs in motorsport and you’re a woman, so it’s not going to be easy.”
For me, that was it – I’d do everything I could to prove them wrong. I applied for an internship at a few teams and didn’t stop calling them. I don’t know how many emails I sent. Finally Williams said, “Come for a day, if you pass a test, you can have an interview and we’ll see.” I passed the test and they could see how motivated I was. They gave me four months, then at the end of the study placement they invited me back for another six months and I got a short-term contract, so I was there about a year and a half. Once you’re in the industry you make contacts and the jobs come from there. It’s the first steps that are the most difficult.
GPR: As well as F1 you worked on an electric vehicles with Venturi, including a land-speed record car, then on to Formula E. What prompted you to move into a team management role?
DB: I’d been in the Williams design office working on the Kinetic Energy Recovery System, so that was an early start in the field of electrification. Then when I moved to Venturi
INTERVIEW it was initially as a
