Martins Zalmans wins Autosport Williams Engineer of the Future 2017 award

Team Bath Racing’s Chassis Lead Martins Zalmans has been named Autosport Williams Engineer of the Future at the 2017 Autosport Awards, held at London’s Grosvenor House Hotel earlier this month.

Now in its third year, this prestigious annual award names an engineering student from a UK university as a rising star of Formula One^TM engineering.  Previous winners are Elizabeth Thompson from Oxford University (2015) and fellow Formula Student competitor Sam O’Neill from Imperial College London (2016).

Martins, originally from Latvia, is a MEng student in his final year at University of Bath and has been involved with Formula Student since his first year. “I first heard about Formula Student when I was 17 and I knew that Bath had a great team, so this really influenced my choice of university.”

Speaking to Martins to congratulate him on his success, we learned that the Award involves a two day assessment workshop where a panel of judges, including Williams CTO and FS Ambassador Paddy Lowe, put candidates through a series of engineering tasks and interviews to test their technical knowledge, personality and leadership skills.  We asked if Martins’ FS experience had helped him during his assessments.  “(FS) definitely provides plenty of content to refer to during the interview process, such as when asked to tell the panel about something I made recently! Being in charge of chassis gave me a great example of my leadership skills and TBR17 being the first UK car to have a full carbon fibre monocoque was interesting to talk to the judges about.”

Martins will join Williams on an initial two-year placement in an accelerated development programme. He will be mentored by senior engineers and rotate through various areas of Williams, including the opportunity to work in the team’s race operations division and gain experience at a Grand Prix. “It’s definitely my dream to work in Formula One^TM and I’m looking forward to gaining experience in lots of different areas to find my specialism.”

ldquo;This award is about finding a leader of the future, so a great engineer who may take on a senior leadership role in future years in the sport” explained Paddy. “We had great candidates but in the end, the judges were unanimous in picking Martins as our winner for this year. His technical understanding was extremely high and he’s very motivated to be an engineer. He has a real love of both the practical and theoretical sides of engineering. We look forward to welcoming him to the team.”

2018 is shaping up to be an exciting year for Martins; graduating with a Masters in Mechanical Engineering, embarking on a two-year placement with Williams and, of course, leading the chassis team at Team Bath Racing and competing in FSUK’s 20^th anniversary competition. “TBR is in good shape in the run up to Christmas.  We’ve finished our design concept, our new engine is running on the Dyno already and we’ve finished our SES. 2017 was a little frustrating for us as a team, but we learned a lot and we think we’re in a really strong position for the 2018 competition.”

Congratulations to Martins from everyone at FSUK and best of luck for 2018.

Photos are taken from Autosport.com, click for further details of the award.