Read time: 17.7 minutes

Whenever a new starter joins McLaren, they’re given a tour of the factory. Not to show people where the restaurant and coffee machines are, but to educate newcomers on our history and what it means to work from McLaren. When Melanie joined, she didn’t need a tour - she’d grown up around the building.

She already knew what it meant to work for McLaren and needed no introduction to the factory. Much like the direction she wanted her career to head, she knew exactly where she was going.

Motorsport-obsessed from a young age, Melanie dreamt of working for McLaren and had the ideal role models to learn from: her mum and dad. Both worked here and had fed her love of motorsport from a young age.

“My inspiration growing up was always my parents,” she says. “Growing up, watching my parents work together, celebrating race wins and Championships, and seeing their excitement for the team’s success, had a huge impact on me. That’s why I’ve always wanted to be part of McLaren and be involved in building cars.”

Melanie’s dad, Tony has worked at McLaren since 1997, while Melanie has worked here since 2017, initially as part of McLaren Applied Technologies and now in our Testing of Previous Cars programme. Her mother Tracey and sister Vicky have also both worked at McLaren – both had roles in the Racing Accounts department, while Vicky worked for Racing and Applied, although never all four at the same time.

Melanie is now a Logistics Coordinator in our TPC team, but was previously in Heritage, a role that saw her build and run cars that her dad would have helped design during his early days at McLaren.  

“When I worked on them, they were considered new. Now you’re working on them, and they’re considered heritage cars,” Tony smiles, as we walk around the McLaren Boulevard, identifying a few of the cars they’ve both worked on.

Melanie and Tony work in different departments at McLaren, but we’ve brought them together ahead of International Women’s Day to discuss their journeys at McLaren and how they inspire one another.

Growing up around motorsport

In the same way Tony would later take Melanie and her sister Vicky to races growing up, his dad took him to motorcycle races in the late 1960s when he was a child.

“I can remember the smell, the dust and the dirt - the noise was incredible. I just thought, ‘Wow,” Tony recalls.

Melanie adds: “My first memories of motorsport are of my parents taking me to Silverstone. We would all camp together, and McLaren would have their own grandstand where families from the factory would sit together. I got to watch the car my dad had designed parts for race around the track and win.”

Both early experiences would lead to a career in motorsport. Tony started as a contract Design Engineer for McLaren on an eight-week term, having previously held roles in the automotive and aerospace industries, before becoming permanent in 2000. “I took a bit of a risk with a temporary contract, but here I am 28 years later.”

In that time, he’s worked his way up the ranks and is now the Research and Design Senior Manager for the Mechanical Design department.

“My dad has always inspired me with his passion for Formula 1 and the way he brings his designs to life on the car.,” Melanie says. “The pressure and dedication he brings to his job have been a big influence on me.

“He’s a brilliant and intelligent person, and watching him grow has been inspiring. Even though he might think no one knows who he is, everyone at McLaren knows who he is and respects him deeply for all he’s done.”

Melanie’s journey to McLaren

The same year Tony was made permanent, he took Melanie to the Goodwood Festival of Speed for the first time. He could never have imagined she’d be working on cars at the event for McLaren two decades later.  

“Melanie's focus on getting into the sport has been very impressive, with no help from us,” Tony says. “We certainly haven't pulled any levers or anything like that. Sure, we’ve offered her some advice, but she’s done it all herself.”

Like many young women aspiring to work in motorsport, Melanie had a dream but little idea of how to get there.

She had her parents to look up to and had met people at McLaren thanks to her parents - at Silverstone and through company socials at the factory - but she wanted to work in a different area to them. 

“My first job was at an ice rink, and I had met some people there who skating on the sessions who were in the motorsport industry,” she says. “They worked at Mercedes-Benz World, and later I got a job there in the events team. One day, in the events team we were all chatting about life and what we’d do if we could have any job. Someone asked me, and I said, ‘I’d love to be a mechanic’.

“They asked why I hadn’t pursued that, and I told them I didn’t know where to start. One of them was also a race mechanic for West Surrey Racing in the British Touring Car Championship and offered me work. So, low and behold, I started doing work experience with them one day a week. This became two days, then three days and a bit more permanent.”

Grasping every opportunity

Keen to gain even more experience, Melanie later took on similar roles as a mechanic on race weekends within the other BTCC teams, in the Porsche Carrera Cup and in W Series.

It was during this time that she first joined McLaren, combining her work experience with a permanent role in McLaren Applied Technologies, initially in Administration as an Engineering Coordinator, before she stepped up to work as part of the team developing the Gen2 Formula E car batteries, attending all of the tests and races around the world.

These were key years for Melanie, as she gained an insight into different areas of the industry and built valuable contacts, which increased her knowledge and differentiated her from those without such a breadth of experiences.  

“You can go to university, but I would tell anyone – go and do work experience even on the side of university,” she says. “Go and gain knowledge and confidence anywhere you can - it doesn’t have to be in motorsport.

“Push for what you want and get the experience to push yourself forward. I was doing work experience and working at the same time – I was pretty much doing seven days a week. I would take anything. When I was at McLaren Applied, I was working in Touring Cars on the side, I did W Series on the side, I took everything I could.

“I was away for 36 race weekends a year, which is crazy. I don’t think I was ever home, I would drop off one suitcase and pick up another.”

Tony adds: “We get 100s of CVs sent through of recent graduates, and they all look similar, so it can be difficult to differentiate. Those extra things people do, getting experience at the track, contacting companies and volunteering, like Mel did, can make a difference. You look at it and think, ‘Well, this person is focused and has pushed themselves.”

Living the dream

When McLaren Applied stopped supplying the batteries for Formula E nearly five years ago, Melanie moved across to McLaren Racing, where she’s since progressed in various roles. Initially a Damper Technician in the Hydraulics department for the F1 team, she went on to work in the Heritage team building the historic F1 cars and is currently part of the TPC team (Test team).  

“I’ve stepped back from being hands-on with the tools to focus on my future goals,” she says of her new role. “I am now coordinating how the car comes together, organising when parts will arrive for servicing, and ensuring they are ready for the team to build. I also kit all the parts needed for the build.”

Like her previous work experience, Melanie says she benefitted from the wide scope of her job in the Heritage team.

“I really enjoyed Heritage,” she reflects. “It is a small team of mechanics, and you have a variety of two or three cars to look after, that you build in a year. Some people have even more cars depending on what events are running within the year, as well as helping the team build each other's cars that run and events.

“In Heritage, it isn’t just the same car, they're all different, and you’re not just working on one part, you do the whole thing. You completely strip the entire car, service it, rebuild it, shake it down and then take it to an event. It's an amazing thing to learn, and every car is different, so you gain such good knowledge of the cars. You can see each year’s car design change and what the designers were trying to improve each year.”

From our Can-Am-winning cars of the 1960s to Lewis Hamilton’s 2008 F1 Championship winner, Melanie has worked on a selection of McLaren race cars spanning 60 decades, but her favourite, she says, is of a more recent vintage. Melanie serviced, maintained, and ran Daniel Riccardo’s Italian Grand Prix-winning MCL35M for a Heritage event, becoming the first person on the Heritage team to do this for a car from F1’s turbo-hybrid era.

She has also worked on one of Tony’s favourite cars, the 1998 MP4/13 – the first car he worked on at McLaren. “That’s such a classic-looking car,” he adds.

Empowering the next generation

As well as becoming the first person from Heritage to run a car from F1’s Turbo-Hybrid Era, Melanie was McLaren’s first female trackside mechanic to work on current F1 within the race team.

“One of my proudest achievements is being the first female mechanic to work on a car trackside and to be involved in race weekends,” she says. “I’ve built hybrid and non-hybrid Formula 1 cars for McLaren, and I will never forget those moments.

"To be the first female mechanic to have ever worked on the cars... ‘I did that, and I did it all on my own. It’s a huge accomplishment for me. Proving to others that I could do it was important.

“When I can, I bring my parents along to watch what I do. It’s important to me that they see what I do and experience McLaren from my perspective. Whether it’s showing them the car I’ve worked on or having them visit the factory for a tour, I always want them to be involved in my journey. Even the family fun days, bringing my sister and her family along to see what I do, she gets to see how the building has grown.”

Tony adds: “It's fantastic. She gets on well with everyone and knows more people than I probably do, even though I’ve been here many years longer. When I think back to when I first started working in 1981, there were no females in engineering in any of the companies I worked at, so to see her come here and get on so well, and to become our first female mechanic, has been amazing.”

Driving positive change

Our 2023 sustainability report showed that by the end of 2023, 20% of our people were women, up by three per cent from 2022, and that 31% of our early careers population were women, which includes apprentices, graduates, interns and trainees.

It’s a good start, but there’s still a significant amount of work to be done in that area. Melanie is one of the many inspirational women working at McLaren and someone the next generation can look up to - a role she takes very seriously.

“It’s definitely important, so you don’t feel like you’re on your own,” she says. “But now, everything has evolved. You have women in the machine shop, electrical, logistics... it’s a completely different atmosphere. Everyone supports each other whenever anyone has questions or wants advice – because it can be quite daunting. You are working with a lot of men."

Melanie feels fortunate to work in a job she loves, given the incredible work and time she’s put in.

“I find it funny when you say: ‘I’m a Formula 1 mechanic,’ and they respond with ‘Haha, yeah, okay,’ and they don’t believe me. I get it quite a lot and have to show them photo of me at work and say, ‘No, I’m being serious’.

“When you work here, it just becomes normal, so you do forget sometimes, and you have to sometimes sit down and think to yourself, ‘I do have a really cool job, I work with all of these people, I do all of these things and go to see events’.

“Not many people get to say: ‘I’ve worked on a car that Senna drove and won a Championship with’. And to experience those moments with my dad was truly special.”