Formula SAE<\/a>, a competition that challenges students to design, build and test small racing cars.<\/p>\nThat really honed her passion for the marriage of electronics and race cars, Westbrook said, and led to a nine-year stint at MoTeC USA, an automotive electronics company based in North Carolina. A few years ago, she went back to England to receive a master\u2019s degree in advanced motorsports mechatronics at Cranfield University.<\/p>\n
And then she landed at Honda Racing in California.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the main things that I love about being here is there\u2019s always something new and some kind of innovation that we\u2019re working on,\u201d Westbrook said. \u201cI really don\u2019t feel like we\u2019re ever kind of just stagnant. It\u2019s always, \u2018OK, what can we do next? How do we push the limits next?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
That means her days are just as fluid as her projects.<\/p>\n
Westbrook doesn\u2019t spend a lot of time at the racetrack anymore in her current role. She\u2019s more shop-based, ready to respond to questions, analyze data or send different sensors or harnesses to the track if needed.<\/p>\n
Along with the electrical systems work, Westbrook is also in charge of the hardware design group. That involves designing and ordering circuit boards and making sure projects are done on time.<\/p>\n
And it\u2019s not just for IndyCar. Westbrook\u2019s projects also include LMDh prototype race cars and other internal testing.<\/p>\n
Westbrook spends most of her time in Honda Racing\u2019s electronics lab, juggling meetings with hands-on work. She sits in on meetings about the company\u2019s priorities and direction \u2014 and then pivots to crimping wires and creating harnesses.<\/p>\n
She\u2019s also a mom to two kids. Proof, she said, one doesn\u2019t have to choose between motherhood and motorsports.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t always easy in her line of work, Westbrook said.<\/p>\n
Back in those early days, when she was in North Carolina, a MoTeC client needed someone to come tune an engine. Westbrook was picked to go out, but the client said, \u201cI don\u2019t want her. She\u2019s a girl,\u201d she recalled.<\/p>\n
This was 2013 \u2014 \u201cso quite a while ago,\u201d she said, \u201cbut really not that long ago as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Westbrook had a supportive boss who told the client: \u201cYou get her, or you get nobody.\u201d<\/p>\n
The client relented, and by the end of the day, his mind was made up: In the future, he only wanted to work with Westbrook.<\/p>\n
What started as a bad experience turned positive, Westbrook said, as it showed people\u2019s minds can be changed. And that\u2019s her advice for other women in the motorsports industry: Put the work in, don\u2019t give up and if someone says no, don\u2019t stop trying.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a lot of work that goes on in the background to make a race happen, Westbrook said.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom the forward-facing things, you see a lot on the racetrack and the cars going around,\u201d she said, \u201cand there\u2019s so much that goes on behind the scenes in terms of the testing and the validation that we do, from all the kinds of problems that we run into and the kind of solutions we find for those.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not just finishing a project and calling it a day, she said.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a constant support system to ensure the current technology is working.<\/p>\n
All the while, juggling new projects and new systems. In other words, asking, \u201cWhat\u2019s next?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Behind the fast cars, the photo finishes, the overall excitement at the race track, there\u2019s a whole world…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":271288,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[7,131,28942,133,132,137,14396,100,16188],"class_list":{"0":"post-271287","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-long-beach","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-long-beach","10":"tag-long-beach-grand-prix","11":"tag-long-beach-headlines","12":"tag-long-beach-news","13":"tag-los-angeles-county","14":"tag-motorsports","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-santa-clarita"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=271287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271287\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/271288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}