Formula 1 and the wider motorsport community in Great Britain is heading towards a deepening skills shortage according to many in the industry. There was a pre-existing problem with not enough graduates of of a high enough calibre being produced and many of those who were good enough being tempted away by the banking industry, and a general lack of experienced staff. Quite simply put there were more jobs in the British motorsport industry than there were people.
According to statistics published by the Motorsport Industry Association in 2013 36% of motorsport industry companies in the UK which they could not fill and the situation has worsened significantly since then, at all levels of the sport. ?There is a shortage of skilled engineers, particularly if you want skilled engineers with Formula One experience and that is partially to do with the fact that most engineers in Formula One these days are locked down with long-term contracts which makes it difficult to get them at relatively short notice? Bob Bell of Renault F1 claims. ?I don?t think there?s necessarily a shortage of young, eager and very capable of graduates, for example, coming out of the education system. Most teams on the grid try and use that resource as much as they possibly can. And so, I think I would agree there is potentially a skill shortage but I think perhaps the difficulties that a team such as ours faces in recruiting is more to do with the difficulty of acquiring experienced F1 engineers already l...