Engineer earns gig working for top Formula One team
By Scott Morgan
Eric LaRoche didn’t grow up around the culture of auto racing. Not of mechanics, either.
The closest he came was the fact that his father, before LaRoche was even born, worked as a mechanic for Toyota, for a little while.
So, then, how did a mechanically inclined kid from Hamilton Square, who almost failed out of college, get a job that just about any car nut would envy? The answer, naturally, is drive.
As of this month, LaRoche is living in England, helping to design the next generation of Formula One racing cars for Infiniti, thanks to having earned one of three job offers through the Infiniti Performance Racing Academy. The process to land the job was strenuous, weeding 1,500 international applicants down to 12 finalists and then three winners. And to think, he almost didn’t read the email that got him there.
LaRoche’s story begins as a young lad with a penchant for knowing how things work. He was that kid who took stuff apart to see the mechanical interplay, then put it all back together. He started small—a paintball gun here, a pressure washer there. In his spare time, he read magazines like Motor Trend, but there was no project car in his driveway, no vintage Harley waiting to roar back to life.
High school, LaRoche says, did little to prepare him for college courses in mechanical sciences. He graduated from Steinert High School in 2007, and entered the University of Maryland to study mechanical and aerospace engineering. He almost failed out in his first year—not because he was partying too hard, but because the classes were just that tough.
“I had no study skills, no organization,” LaRoche said. “I was on academic probation and had to get my GPA up to a 2.0. That tells you how low my grades were.”
LaRoche managed to turn it around just in time, and so began a 7-year bid to earn his dual bachelor’s degree.
Along with the effort to improve his studying and organizational skills, the Hamilton Square resident sought out professional work experience. Unlike some of his classmates, LaRoche had no connections that could land him any experience in his field. He embarked on the path of “busting my ass to talk to the right people at the right time,” he said.
In 2009, LaRoche scored an internship with the U.S. Army, working on an environmentally friendly range modernization project for a new heavy artillery moving-target system at the Aberdeen Test Center. Two years after that, he interned at BAE Systems, where he incorporated design changes on mechanical interfaces of weapons systems for the U.S. Navy’s submarine program.
It was during this timeframe that LaRoch discovered his school’s SAE (previously known as the Society of Automotive Engineers) racing teams—the Formula SAE, in which a student design team develops a small formula-style racecar, and the Baja SAE, in which they design and build an off-road vehicle.
In 2011, LaRoche was introduced to the Baltimore Grand Prix. Unable to get anyone in his class to go with him, he went alone and met numerous engineers in the paddocks. He made lots of connections, but no one was able to offer him an internship to learn about racecars. He instead took an internship with Boeing in St. Louis, where he worked on unmanned aircraft, performed composite materials structural analysis and learned other advanced concepts.
In May 2013, he finally met someone who could let him into the racing industry. For five months, LaRoche worked on the Chrysler Street & Racing Technology team, shadowing race engineers for Viper GTS-R (American Le Mans Series) and learning analysis techniques and racing strategy. He also designed a safety cage for the Fiat 500 Abarth that was compliant with FIA and SCCA regulations.
This resume caught the eye of Infiniti when it looked to finalize its list of candidates for the Infiniti Performance Engineering Academy. About 1,500 entrants from the top engineering schools around the world submitted their resumes and a 500-word essay. Thirty made it through to the second round, a Skype interview.
“A lot of the judges were blown away by Eric,” said Gary Rosewell, the project manager for the academy in England. “His experience was a natural indicator of talent.”
LaRoche’s disinterest in his email account, however, almost caused him to miss the initial application.
“I get a lot of emails,” he said. “I delete a lot of them. A teammate of mine asked if I saw the one from Infiniti Red Bull. I said ‘No. Whatever.’”
After he got sufficiently nagged, LaRoche found the contest details in his trash folder and subsequently blew the doors off the competition.
Ultimately, a mere 12 finalists jetted to the United Kingdom to work with the race team that’s won the last four Formula One world championships. Until he applied, LaRoche had plans to go back to work for Chrysler and see where it took him. But in the U.K., things got real in a hurry.
For three days, LaRoche and his fellow candidates were challenged to such tasks as designing and building a battery-powered car in about three hours, and to pass engineering tests. These were also personality tests, Rosewell said. Infiniti was not looking for mere mechanical know-how, but for future team members who can work like an actual well-oiled machine, under pressure and at their peak.
Ultimately, Infiniti was looking for just three people to give the opportunity of a lifetime: a year’s paid job, with full salary plus a brand new Q50, working out of the company’s facility in Milton Keynes, U.K.
Standing in the room with his 11 cohorts and three of the most respected race engineers on the planet was surreal enough. When Adrian Newey, the chief technical officer at Infiniti Red Bull Racing and a personal idol of LaRoche’s, called his name, “Eric almost leant forward and passed out,” Rosewell said, with a laugh. And, if you don’t believe Rosewell, there’s video proof on YouTube, if you search the phrase “Infiniti Performance Engineering Academy Winners.”
For the next year, LaRoche will be working on Infiniti’s Formula One team and with the company’s road cars, touring Europe and testing the limits of autos as they evolve. Racing engineering is his ultimate goal.
He does have an interest in driving, and, yes, he does understand that the best racers are those who understand the engineering of their cars. But he doesn’t want to actually be a driver.
“I want to do what I do extremely well,” he said.
More than anything, LaRoche is drawn to road racing, where the engineering and innovations actually translate to the cars people drive on their way to work or to vacation with the family. Rosewell calls the concept a “trickle-down effect of the technology.” LaRoche sees it as an important microcosm.
“What I do there will matter in the grand scheme,” he said.
World-renown racing engineer Adrian Newey congratulates Hamilton resident Eric LaRoche for his accomplishments at the Infiniti Performance Engineering Academy. (Photo courtesy of Infiniti Performance Engineering Academy/Getty Images.),
