Hannah Schmitz is one of the most recognized women within the Formula One paddock. As principal strategy engineer for Red Bull Racing she is a regular on the pitwall during a race weekend. As one of the few, and sometimes only, women on the pitwall, she regularly finds a camera in her face.
In what is an already highly-pressurized role, this attention only adds to that. But it is something Schmitz admits she has learned to embrace.
For the 39-year-old, growing up, there were no female role models of senior women in engineering within the F1 paddock, but she accepts that she is now one herself. As with many women in the paddock, Schmitz said she never had any intention of making a point of her gender, but with diversity and inclusion moving at a slower pace than she expected, she changed her opinion on it.
“When I first started, I almost didn't want people to think of me as a woman or it wasn't like I was trying to be a man, but my gender doesn't impact my ability to do my job,” Schmitz says.
“And so, my gender isn't really something that needs to be a factor when I'm at work. But then I just felt like diversity would improve. It's just taking a bit longer in this industry.
“But I realized that actually it doesn't just seem to happen. And so, we do need to be role models and kind of shout about how great the job is. I absolutely love my job, how great it is and how you can do this. You don't have to be a middle-class white man to be able to do the job.”
Schmitz is speaking from inside Red Bull’s impressive MK7 car museum at the team’s headquarters as she gears up for International Women’s Day. As one of the most recognizable women in the sport, she has taken it upon herself to drive forward initiatives within the company.
There is a gender inclusion network, set up three years ago which Schmitz co-chairs with the female colleague from HR . That is a forum to discuss anything related to diversity or inclusion and it is not just made up of women, who make up 12 percent of the Red Bull workforce. Men from within the company, particularly those with daughters, Schmitz notes, are part of the group. She also held an external webinar in the run up to IWD, which anyone could sign up to and hear from five women from within Red Bull that had jobs that perhaps were not well known about. The point being to inspire more women into F1 who perhaps don’t even know what careers are available to them.
Schmitz herself is certainly inspiring. She graduated from Cambridge with a degree in mechanical engineering and as she says, always knew she wanted to do something that people wouldn’t expect.
Now a mother of two-young children, she has to juggle that with a high-pressured job which includes travelling to half the races. For the other half, she is working back at base in Milton Keynes.
She regularly finds her inbox full of messages from young girls asking for advice of how to get into F1. And while she admits that the volume of requests has become unmanageable, when able, she sends a note: “I think most of the career advice is that when we do panels and other things, people say not to give up at the first try.
“So not to just think, oh, I'm not good enough. That's why I didn't get in. It takes a lot of people doing going the extra mile, like networking, trying to get people's names, those kind of things.
“Or phoning up the hiring manager and being like, have you seen my CV? Things like that. So that's a lot of what you hear for people that ended up getting in the industry. [It] was like having that bit of extra encouragement or going that extra mile to get there, which obviously [you] shouldn't need to do, but it does seem to be. But there still aren't really that many role models.”
While Schmitz didn’t have role models growing up, she says she had them when she started her family, including Allyson Felix, who competed at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics just after having her daughter.
“I think when I had decided to start a family, then I had some role models of people kind of going back to work, because it then becomes quite a lot of pressure or talk about. 'Are you still going to do your job? Are you sure?' That kind of thing, which I don't think happens for men as much as it does for women. So then it becomes a big question,” Schmitz says.
“Then there were quite a few role models of women going back to work. For me, Allyson Felix was one of the really great ones. Absolutely incredible.
“So reading stories like that and thinking, oh, yeah, okay, I can still do this. And for me, that's when the kind of role models started more to come in. That hit home for me so hard when I was pregnant.”
Red Bull have policies in place now for parents, which, Schmitz says, weren’t necessarily in place when she had her first child, but she asked and they accommodated. And those policies are not just for mothers. Parents have the choice to fly out a day later and the team have worked out plans for engineers to be at track on Fridays, not Thursdays as was the case in years gone by. Obviously, this is not always possible for some roles, but for Schmitz, she will leave for the season opener in Melbourne on Tuesday, giving her that all-important extra day at home with her family.
