Laura Mueller on pole as F1’s first female race engineer

By Wendellyn Mateo

Laura Mueller is stepping into the shoes of one of the most high-profile trackside roles in Formula One as a race engineer for the MoneyGram Haas F1 Team – just weeks before the 2025 season officially kicks off in Australia.  

Set to work alongside French driver Esteban Ocon, Mueller will head the engineering team and oversee the performance of his car, becoming the voice in his ear as Haas goes wheel to wheel against other rivals on the track.  

And it is a major move, considering she will be the first-ever female race engineer in the history of F1. 

Passion for motorsport 

Mueller was part of the simulator department of Haas in 2022, before becoming a performance engineer and eventually F1’s first female race engineer.  

Her admiration for motorsport, however, got reignited a year after she graduated school, and she has walked that path since then, armed by a bachelor’s and master’s degree in automotive engineering from the Technical University of Munich and headlined by a goal to some day work in the fast-paced industry.  

“I always watched Formula 1, so I never really studied mechanical engineering to work in car production or something…I always kind of admired the field of motorsport…” she said in a report from Females in Motorsport.  

Haas team principal Ayao Komatsu was quick to emphasise her work ethic, calling her “a pretty determined character”. 

But Komatsu also stressed that Mueller wasn’t chosen solely because of her gender. 

“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,” he was quoted as saying by the F1 official website.  

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Breaking the glass ceiling  

F1 is often a male-dominated sport, with only five female drivers making it to the roster – the first being Maria Teresa de Filippis debuting back in 1958 and 1959. 

Since then, there has only been a few in between, a glaring difference in a sport that technically allows competition among everyone with the grit for speed, no matter the race or gender.  

According to the latest Gender Pay Gap Report from F1, about 63 per cent of people permanently employed at F1 were men and 37 per cent were women in 2023.  

Several initiatives have been launched to promote the involvement of more women in motorsport, such as the F1 Academy in 2023 that aimed to prepare female drivers for higher levels of competition and the global initiative “F1 Academy Discover Your Drive” to increase the talent pool on and off track. 

Across the wide spectrum of the sport, Mueller isn’t the only one trying to put her feet down and break the proverbial glass ceiling.  

Carine Cridelich is set to work at Haas as Head of Strategy, while Hannah Schmitz currently serves as the Principal Strategy Engineer for Oracle Red Bull Racing.  

They join Bernie Collins, Ruth Buscombe Divey and Claire Williams – just to name a few – who have worked their way to positions of power in F1’s long history.  

Compared to male counterparts, it is a relatively short list, but it is a growing one.

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