My Engineering Journey: StreetDrone founder Mark Preston

Beginnings 

I grew up in Australia. My grandfather was a salvage merchant, so we were around tractors, trucks and cars. I pretty much wanted to be an engineer, although nobody in my family had been one.

1986-91, Mechanical engineering, Monash University, Melbourne

We had a presentation from someone from Rolls-Royce, and I think the guy had worked in Formula One and I just went, “right, that’s what I want to do”. In my spare time I started to help out at Borland Racing, the only manufacturer of open-wheel race cars in Australia.

1991-93, Design engineer, Tieman Industries

I worked for a manufacturer designing trucks and I kept doing motor racing on the side with Borland.

1993-95, Project engineer, General Motors Holden

I went to GM doing crash analysis and crash testing. That was back in the days when GM only had 14 CAD computers and I had to do the night shift to work on element analysis.

1995-96, Project engineer, Holden Special Vehicles

In my parallel career I jumped over to a company called Holden Special Vehicles where we did special AMG vehicles. I still did racing and we got to the point where we did quite well in Formula Ford with Spectrum Racing Cars. While we were racing, a journalist said to me: “Do you know that you have to go to England before you’re 27 if you want to get a work visa, so you’d better get on your bike if you want to work in Formula One.”

1996-2002, Head of R&D, Arrows Grand Prix

Holden was owned by TWR, and they had just bought Arrows. I said to my boss, “I’m going to England – it could be two weeks or two years”. I began as a stress engineer at Arrows and worked my way up to vehicle dynamics as well, and then eventually I took over the labs and the test team.

2002-04, Principal designer, McLaren Racing

Sadly, Arrows went bankrupt, but I was lucky enough to follow my old boss to McLaren to do similar things. I did all of the composites design, monocoques, wings.

2005-06, MBA, Oxford University

I decided I needed to learn a bit more about the business side of things so when I was 36 I went back to university to do an executive MBA at the Said Business School at Oxford. I would recommend it, but not straight after university. Spend some time in industry first.

2005-08, Founder and technical director, Super Aguri F1 Team

I had this crazy idea of starting an F1 team. Suzuki, Honda and Bridgestone were looking at starting a second F1 team, and we came along at just the right time. The biggest piece of advice I’d give to any student wanting to get into F1 is “join Formula Student”. I’ve hired a lot of Formula Student alumni.

2008-14, MD, Formtech Composites 

When the crash happened, Honda pulled out of supporting our team, so we created a carbon-fibre manufacturing company from the remnants of the F1 team. I wanted to do more of the business side of engineering. When I give advice to any student, I say you need to start as a specialist and then become a generalist. 

2016-present, Techeetah Formula E Team

I helped an electric motor company spin out of Oxford University and that got me into electric vehicles. We started a Formula E team. We won the 2018 Drivers’ Championship.

2016-present, Founder, StreetDrone

We realised that autonomous vehicles were coming next. So we sat down with Renault and figured out how to take one of their electric vehicles and turn it into an autonomous platform – StreetDrone 1. It’s a Raspberry Pi for autonomous vehicles.