To those who tuned into the first Grand Prix of the Formula One (F1) season this weekend at the Australian Grand Prix, you may have noticed a new voice over the radio for American Team Haas’ new driver, Esteban Ocon, in the form of his Race Engineer, Laura Mueller. On January 21, 2025, Laura Mueller was promoted to Race Engineer for Esteban Ocon after joining the team in 2022.
Mueller’s promotion also marks a significant milestone in the sport since she is the first full-time female to take on the high-profile position of Race Engineer. A race engineer is the main point of communication between a driver and their team during a race. They are seated on the pit wall and are the only personnel on the team allowed to deliver messages from the driver to the engineering team and vice versa. Since each driver in a Formula One race has different preferences, an engineer must know their driver’s particular pattern to translate any feedback about the car back to the rest of the team, who can then make any necessary adjustments. They are also responsible for ensuring that their driver remains motivated while on the track and providing feedback on improving their performance. Overall, they play a vital role in the drivers’ weekend, and it’s very common for drivers to become close friends with their respective engineers over years of racing together, like Sir Lewis Hamilton and his race engineer of eleven years, Peter Bonnington or fondly known as “Bono.”
Mueller has years of experience across several different motorsport categories. She started her motorsport career in 2014 as an analysis intern with German team Phoenix Racing before building on her engineering education in Formula Renault 2.0 and stock cars, working with former F1 driver Lucas di Grassi. Her racing expertise continued to grow as she worked with numerous teams across LMP2, DTM and GT3. Upon joining the Kannapolis, North Carolina-based team, Mueller began working in Haas’s simulator department in 2022 before quickly being promoted to Performance Engineer.
“She’s a pretty determined character,” said Ayo Komatsu, the Team Principal of Haas. “And then she’s very hardworking. Her work ethic is really, really good. [W]hen she sees a problem, she digs deep, and she doesn’t stop at the first answer. [It’s h]er determination is the one that impresses me the most.”
He added, “If you look at how many female engineers we have in the office, it’s definitely more than before. But it’s not like I chose Laura because she’s female. We don’t care [about] nationality, gender – it really doesn’t matter because what matters is work. How you can fit into the team, how you can maximise the performance. I believe it is the right choice.”
Laura Mueller joins a small but growing club of influential women in motorsport, like Red Bull’s Principal Strategy Engineer, Hannah Schmitz; Scuderia Ferrari’s Head of Communications, Silvia Hoffer Frangipane; and Managing Director of F1 Academy, a female-only category designed to increase female participation in motorsport, Susie Wolff.
Women have always been critical to the success of F1, from test drivers in the past like Lella Lombardi and Susie Wolff to engineers of today like Margarita ‘Marga’ Torres Díez and Laura Mueller. While the quest for greater representation in motorsport is still ongoing, it’s evident that the sport has come a long way in the last 75 years. In the future, we hope that even more women will become involved in motorsports, from engineers to team principles and even drivers.