Chasing the Apex

Welcome back to another episode of Chasing the Apex! Today I am speaking with BMW LMDh Program Chief Engineer Loïc Descamps. Loïc began his career as an engineering intern with the W Racing Team, taking part in racing events across France and Belgium. His first full-time role involved working as a Data and Performance Engineer for Hitech GP in the FIA F3 series. From there, Loic moved to the French DAMS team, where his responsibilities included managing the Driver in the Loop simulation architecture as well as working as a race engineer in the GP3 series. Loic has now spent almost the last 8 years with the BMW group, working for their DTM, Formula E, and LMDh programs. He most recently was a race engineer for Jake Dennis and Alexander Sims in the Formula E series and is now in charge of the IMSA LMDh operations for BMW M Motorsport.

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Welcome back to another episode of Chasing the Apex! Today, we are sitting down with Alex Athanasiadis, the Vehicle Performance Lead Engineer for the Porsche Penske WEC program. Originally from Greece, Alex started his career as a Junior Performance GT3 Engineer with Callaway Competition in Germany. From there, he moved to a role as a Vehicle Dynamics Engineer with McLaren Automotive. In this role, he worked on the 720S-Spider, Elva, Senna GTR, and 765LT. Alex then spent some time as a freelance race engineer before joining Gordon Murray Design. During his time with the company, he led the vehicle dynamics attributes development on the T33, T50, and T50S. Alex then made a move to the United States, where he worked for the Dale Coyne team within the IndyCar Series. He served as a Performance Engineer for Takuma Sato and the Lead Race Engineer for David Malukas. Most recently, Alex has joined the Porsche Penske team and is in charge of Vehicle Performance for the WEC team.

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Welcome back to another episode of Chasing the Apex! Today I am sitting down with Fabio Segalini. After earning his Bachelor's Degree in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Parma, Fabio started his professional career with Dallara. While at Dallara, he held a multitude of different design oriented roles. Fabio then became the Technical Director and Race Engineer at Durango Engineering which competed in both the F3000 and GP2 championships. After almost three years with the team, Fabio then made the jump to F1, spending time with Toro Rosso, Sauber F1, and Haas F1. Since then he has spent time with Oreca and Podium Advanced Technologies and has recently started a new position as the Technical Director at MYGALE, a French racing car manufacturer. 

Welcome back to another episode of Chasing the Apex! Today I am sitting down with motorsports engineer, Dominic Harlow. After earning a degree from Imperial College London, Dominic started his career working on rally and touring cars with the Motorsports Development firm. Dominic then joined the Williams Touring Car group, working as a Design and Race Engineer before entering F1 with the Jordan team. After a six year stint with Jordan, he then moved to the Force India team where he held roles as the Chief Race & Test Engineer as well as the Director of Circuit Engineering. Dominic then spent a year with the Williams F1 team as a Senior Operations Engineer and now runs his own consulting firm and is the Head of Technical Audit for the FIA. 

Welcome back to another episode of Chasing the Apex! Today I am sitting down with Red Bull F1 engineer Francesco Laus. Francesco earned both his Bachelors and Masters degrees in engineering at the Politecnico di Milano in Italy. He then completed an internship with the Racing Engineering GP2 team in Spain, working on in-house simulation tools before starting his full time career with the Red Bull F1 team. He first joined the team as a Tire Simulation Engineer and in 2021 earned a promotion, now serving as the team’s Senior Tire Simulation Engineer.

Welcome back to another episode of Chasing the Apex. Today I am sitting down with Indy NXT driver Josh Green. Originally from New York, Josh started his karting career in 2015, working his way through the ranks until he made his formula car debut in 2019. Since then, Josh has competed in both the USF 2000 and Indy Pro 2000 series before moving up to the Indy NXT series with HMD in 2023. 

Welcome back to another episode of Chasing the Apex, today we are sitting down with motorsport journalist Sam Smith. Sam started out his career as a press officer for the FIA Sportscar Championship before spending nearly a decade as the Communications Manager with Lola Cars. Sam then transitioned to a role as the Media Officer of the World Endurance Championship, while running a media company and writing the first definitive book on Formula E at the same time. Within the past few years, Sam has also picked up a position as the Formula E Chief Correspondent at The Race. 

Welcome back to another episode of Chasing the Apex, today we are sitting down Arrow McLaren IndyCar Team Principal Gavin Ward. After attending Oxford Brookes for schooling, Gavin started his career with Red Bull F1, working positions as a Tire and Trackside Control System Engineer before becoming a Trackside Race Engineer, working with drivers Mark Webber and Daniel Ricciardo, and reporting directly to Adrian Newey. Gavin then worked as an aerodynamicist for the team before moving stateside to work as Josef Newgarden’s race engineer with the Penske IndyCar team. In 2022, Gavin joined the Arrow McLaren team and served roles as the Director of Trackside Engineering and Racing Director before recently being promoted to Team Principal. 

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Welcome back to another episode of Chasing the Apex! Today I’m sitting down with someone who has a long and exciting list of experiences in motorsport, Justin Taylor. Justin started out his career as a race mechanic before quickly working his way up to becoming a Data Engineer for the Audi Sport LMP1 team. From there he spent almost 10 years race engineering many of Audi’s different LMP1 cars where he racked up accolades like a win and podium at Le Mans, three wins at Sebring, 1st place in the 2012 WEC Championship, and 2nd place in the 2016 WEC Championship. Since then he has held the race engineer position at Oreca, Ed Carpenter Racing, and AJ Foyt Racing. Justin is currently a race engineer for the highly anticipated LMH hypercar project at Ferrari. I hope you enjoy the episode!

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Welcome back to another episode of Chasing the Apex, I’m your host Sid Sudhir and today we are sitting down with racing driver Sting Ray Robb. Sting Ray first got in a go-kart at age 5 and it wasn’t long before he was racing competitively, winning a national karting championship in 2015. This helped springboard him into his car racing career, starting with the Pro Mazda series before transitioning to the Indy Pro 2000 series. He spent two years in Indy Pro with Juncos, winning the series in 2020 which earned him a move up to the Indy Lights series. In 2022 Robb had another impressive season with Andretti in the Indy Lights series, finishing 2nd in the standings with two poles and one race win. Sting Ray will be competing as a rookie in IndyCar this year with Dale Coyne Racing.

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