You Don't Need to Be an Engineer to Work in F1

Formula 1 returns to Sepang on 2 to 4 October 2026, for the first time in nine years. If you are 13 to 17 and you want to work in F1, here is what the jobs actually are, what the odds actually look like, and what to study. Almost none of it involves designing a car.

1. Why F1 is a Malaysian story again

On 26 July 2026, Formula 1 and the FIA confirmed Malaysia would join the 2026 calendar. The race runs at Sepang International Circuit from 2 to 4 October, between Azerbaijan and Singapore.

Be precise about what this is, because plenty of people online have it wrong. It is not a revived Malaysian Grand Prix. It is the Bahrain Grand Prix, relocated to Sepang, and it keeps the Bahrain name. Bahrain's own round could not go ahead, Bahrain is funding this one, and Bahrain keeps the naming rights. Malaysia has not won a long-term contract. This is one race, and what follows depends partly on how well it goes.

Motorsport in Malaysia is not a one-off, though. In July 2026 the government signed MotoGP to Sepang from 2027 through 2031, and the 2025 Malaysian round set an attendance record of 190,977. The 2026 MotoGP runs four weeks after the F1 race. Whatever happens with Formula 1, there is a world-championship event at Sepang every year for the next five years.

2. The Malaysians already inside

There have been Malaysians working in the Formula 1 paddock, at every race, for years.

They are the PETRONAS Trackside Fluid Engineers. They work inside the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS garage, running roughly 150 fuel and lubricant samples through gas chromatography, viscometry and spectrometry across a race weekend, checking the fluids meet FIA rules and telling the team what the engine is quietly doing to itself. Because Mercedes supplies power units to McLaren, Aston Martin and Williams, their work reaches four teams.

They are not employed by Mercedes. They are employed by a Malaysian company that sponsors Mercedes.

Look at that last row. Wan Mohd Saifullah went to SMK Agama Falahiah in Kelantan, took an electrical engineering degree, spent a decade on instrumentation work with nothing to do with racing, and joined Formula 1 at 36. There was no straight line. There rarely is.

Malaysia also has Alex Yoong, the only Malaysian to race in F1, still in the sport as a broadcaster, and Jazeman Jaafar, a former Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS development driver. What we could not find, despite looking hard, is a single named Malaysian in a commercial, marketing or media role inside an F1 team. That is not a discouragement. It is an opening.

3. The honest odds

We could write you a guide full of encouragement and no numbers. Plenty of sites do. We would rather you and your parents could judge this properly.

On one ordinary day in July 2026, the main motorsport job board carried 238 open Formula 1 positions worldwide: 70 mechanical engineering, 56 general engineering, 31 racing team, 27 production, 18 management, 14 software, 12 electrical, 10 finance, 8 aerodynamics and 8 business.

Roughly two thirds are technical. So when we say you do not need to be an engineer, we are not claiming the non-engineering door is wider. In raw numbers it is narrower. We are saying it exists, almost nobody tells you about it, and the qualifications it asks for are ones you can start on from Malaysia.

The FIA also caps how many people a team can bring to a race. For 2026 each team may have no more than 60 "operational personnel" inside the circuit during a race weekend, already legislated to fall to 59 in 2027 and 58 in 2028. But read the next line of that regulation, because it is quietly on your side: the cap excludes "staff whose duties are solely connected with hospitality, marketing, media, security or driving trucks". The commercial people do not count against the limit.

As for how many chase these jobs, one team has published real figures. Cadillac, joining the grid in 2026, had to hire an entire organisation at once. Team principal Graeme Lowdon gave the numbers publicly in January 2026: 595 positions advertised, 143,265 applications, 9,051 shortlisted, over 6,500 interviewed, 520 hired.

That is about 241 applications per role. The UK average across all graduate vacancies is around 140. So Formula 1, the most glamorous employer in the field, draws roughly 1.7 times the competition of an ordinary graduate job. That is a lot. It is not the impossible wall people imagine.

And when PETRONAS ran an open global search for one trackside fluid engineer in 2018, more than 7,000 people applied. One got it. Both things are true: broad hiring rounds are winnable, single glamorous seats are not.

4. The rule that changes everything

This is the part to remember, because it is why the non-engineering door exists at all, and almost nobody writing about F1 careers mentions it.

Since 2021 teams have operated under a cost cap: a hard legal limit on spending, set at US$215,000,000 for 2026 in the FIA's Financial Regulations. Now read what Article 5 excludes from that cap:

• all costs attributable to Marketing Activities
• all costs attributable to Human Resources, Finance, or Legal Activities
• catering at the circuit and the factory
• driver salaries, and the three highest paid individuals

"Marketing Activities" is formally defined to include negotiating sponsorship and licensing agreements, hospitality rights, tickets, merchandising, media content and fan engagement.

You do not have to take our word for it. F1 teams registered in the UK file audited accounts that must disclose employee numbers by category. We downloaded them and read them.

Every one lands between a fifth and a third. Add it across the grid and you are looking at a few thousand non-technical jobs in Formula 1, a far bigger number than the one in most people's heads.

Two details worth pulling out. At Mercedes in 2025, engineering headcount fell by 22 while administration grew by 47, in a year when research and development spending went up. And Williams is the only team that breaks marketing out as its own category rather than burying it: of 949 staff, 76 work in marketing. That is not a rounding error. That is a department.

Then there is Formula One Management Limited, the company that actually runs the championship. Its 2024 accounts say:

More than half the people who run Formula 1 are not in a technical role, and the company grew 14 per cent in a year. F1 organises itself into six departments: Corporate, Technical, Operations, Broadcast and Media, Commercial, and Race. One of the six is Technical.

If you take one number from this guide, take that one.

Two caveats we owe you: "administration" in company accounts is a catch-all covering commercial, marketing, finance, HR, legal and IT, so outside Williams it is not a pure marketing count. And McLaren Racing Ltd includes the team's Formula E, Extreme E and IndyCar operations. Ferrari and Audi publish no F1-specific breakdown.

5. Three circles: how close do you want to be?

Not every job that gets you into an F1 paddock is a job at an F1 team.

Circle 1, inside the team. Mercedes, McLaren, Ferrari, Red Bull, Williams, Aston Martin, Alpine, Haas, Audi, Racing Bulls or Cadillac pays your salary. Hardest to reach, and what everyone aims at.

Circle 2, in the orbit. You work for a partner, supplier, promoter, broadcaster or the governing body, and the job takes you to races. More jobs here than in circle 1, and considerably easier to reach.

Circle 3, alongside the sport. Hospitality, hotels, travel, events, agencies and media around the venue. Be clear-eyed: this is a career near Formula 1, not a career in it. A job at a hotel overlooking a circuit is a hospitality career, and the view is a perk of the employer, not a career outcome. We looked for evidence that venue staff get paddock access and found none.

What is true is that for many people circle 3 is a better life than the one they imagined, at a fraction of the competition. And the employer worth naming is the circuit, not the hotel. Sepang, Singapore GP and their equivalents hire in event operations, ticketing, marketing, retail and trackside safety.

6. Nine non-engineering F1 jobs nobody tells you about

Everything below comes from real job advertisements posted by real Formula 1 employers in 2025 and 2026. Where an advert names a qualification, we quote it.

7. What to study for which job

This is the part to screenshot. Every qualification listed appeared in a real Formula 1 job advertisement.

8. Your plan, by where you are now

9. Where to study, and why country matters

We are a Malaysian consultancy and we place students in Ireland, Spain and France, so read this knowing that. What follows is our honest assessment of what each country gives you, including where it does not help.

Ireland: finance, accountancy, data and computing

Start with what Ireland is not. It has never hosted a Formula 1 Grand Prix and has no F1 team base. Jordan Grand Prix raced under an Irish licence but operated out of Silverstone in England. The Republic has one FIA-licensed circuit, Mondello Park, and its motorsport governing body has eight full-time staff. You do not go to Ireland for motorsport.

What Ireland gives you is the training F1's business side buys. Sixteen of the world's twenty largest technology companies operate there, nineteen of the top twenty pharmaceutical companies manufacture there, and Irish-based aircraft lessors manage 9,504 aircraft worth 315 billion US dollars, around 69 per cent of the world's leased aircraft by value. That last one is not a random statistic: running the ownership, financing and redeployment of a global fleet of extremely expensive moving assets is structurally the same problem Formula 1 has. Everything is taught in English, and Irish tuition is meaningfully cheaper than the UK.

Living costs are what families underestimate. Trinity's own published estimate, excluding tuition, is €19,937 to €29,050 a year. So a business degree in Dublin realistically costs €42,000 to €52,000 a year all in, while the same year at TU Dublin might be closer to €30,000 to €40,000. Ireland also has a real student accommodation shortage. Plan for it rather than discover it.

One more Irish rule with real consequences: the Third Level Graduate Programme gives you 12 months to find work after an honours bachelor's, and 24 months after a master's. Doubling your runway is often worth the extra year.

Spain: events, hospitality, marketing and a second language

Spain is the only country with two Grands Prix in 2026: Barcelona in June and the new Madrid circuit in September, which holds a contract through 2035. Barcelona has not been dropped; it rotates with Spa across 2026, 2028, 2030 and 2032. So Spain's live events industry is expanding right now, in exactly the areas Ireland's permit system shuts out.

Spanish public universities are also genuinely cheap, starting from around €800 a year in the lowest-cost regions. But tuition is set regionally, and regions may charge non-EU students considerably more: in Madrid a public university publishes non-EU rates for business, law and economics of around €6,822. The gap between €800 and €6,800 is entirely about which region you go to, and a student residence permit does not count as residency for fee purposes.

The other thing to be honest about: the cheap public degrees are largely taught in Spanish. English-taught sports and event management programmes are mostly at private institutions at private prices. That makes learning Spanish load-bearing rather than optional, which is why a pathway pairing A-Levels or AUSMAT with Instituto Cervantes Spanish makes sense. Spanish is genuinely useful here too: two Spanish rounds, plus Mexico, plus one of the sport's largest fan bases.

France: data, AI and computing

France's Formula 1 credentials are weaker than people assume. There is no French Grand Prix in 2026. Alpine, the French team, runs its race operation from Enstone in England, and its historic Viry-Châtillon site has been repurposed away from F1. Michelin is not F1's tyre supplier; Pirelli is, until 2028.

What France genuinely has is depth in artificial intelligence, data science and computing. INRIA leads the national AI research programme and the PRAIRIE institute won €75 million in cluster funding for 2024 to 2029. If you are aiming at the data and software family, France is a real option, and our SFERE route runs through a French foundation year into science and technology degrees.

The UK: where the jobs actually are

We should say the obvious thing. Seven of the eleven teams are headquartered in Britain, and ten of the eleven have a factory there, clustered across Oxfordshire, Northamptonshire, Buckinghamshire and Surrey. Ferrari is the only team with no UK site. Even Cadillac, the American entry, runs its 2026 operation out of Silverstone while its Indiana headquarters is built.

Which is precisely why we usually suggest not spending your entire education budget on a UK undergraduate degree. A sensible sequence is a bachelor's in Ireland, then a master's in the UK: an English-taught EU degree at lower cost, a year of Irish post-study work rights, then the UK master's that often opens the door.

Be precise about how this works, because much advice online gets it wrong:

• An Irish degree does not qualify you for the UK Graduate Route. That requires a UK degree, studied in the UK, on a Student visa.
• The Common Travel Area does not help you. It covers British and Irish citizens. A Malaysian on an Irish student permission gets nothing from it.
• You pay UK international fees either way. Time in Ireland does not create home fee status.
• The UK Graduate Route runs two years if you apply on or before 31 December 2026, and 18 months from 1 January 2027.

One genuine small advantage: Malaysia is not on the UK's visa national list, so a Malaysian student in Dublin can travel to the UK as a visitor without a visit visa, which makes interviews, open days and a trip to Silverstone straightforward. Visiting is not working, though. An internship at a UK team still needs UK work permission. If your family's budget does reach a UK degree, that is a legitimate choice and we can help you apply.

10. The right to work

Being qualified and being hireable are two different things, and for a Malaysian the gap between them is immigration law. This is the section most articles leave out.

But here is the door that is open. Williams states that visa sponsorship is assessed case by case for its graduate and placement programmes, which include the Commercial and Marketing Graduate stream. That is the clearest published route into an F1 team for a non-UK candidate we could find, and it is a business route, not an engineering one.

The two realistic sequences:

1. Degree, then placement or graduate scheme. Study in Ireland or the UK, use the placement year and graduate schemes while on a student visa, then move onto post-study work rights.
2. Qualify professionally, then enter as an experienced hire. ACCA, CIMA, CIPS, CIPD or law, then three to five years of real experience. Experienced hires are far more likely to be sponsored than graduates, and far more likely than apprentices.

One honest caution about route 2. You can start ACCA in Malaysia without leaving home, and you should not conclude that studying abroad is unnecessary. The qualification makes you qualified. It does not put you in the same country as the jobs, give you the right to work there, or connect you to anyone who hires. That is what studying abroad does. You generally need both.

11. Questions we get asked

How do I get a career in F1 as a Malaysian?

There are two realistic routes, and both are open to you. Study a business, finance, computing or media degree abroad, then use a placement year or graduate scheme at a team that sponsors visas, Williams being the clearest published example. Or qualify professionally from Malaysia through ACCA or CIMA, build three to five years of experience, and enter later as an experienced hire.

UK apprenticeships are not an option, because they require prior UK residence and cannot sponsor visas. Whichever route you take, the thing that separates candidates is work you can show, and you can start building that at 13.

What jobs are there in F1 that don't need an engineering degree?

Nine families, all of them real and all advertised in 2025 and 2026: partnership activation and sponsorship, commercial development and race promotion, finance and cost cap compliance, logistics and customs, data and software, marketing and content, media and photography, licensing and hospitality, and regulation and officiating.

Between a fifth and a third of the staff at every F1 team that files audited accounts work in non-technical roles, and at Formula One Management itself more than half do.

How much do these jobs pay?

We would love to tell you and we cannot honestly do it. Across roughly 65 real Formula 1 job advertisements read for this guide, covering every team plus Formula 1 itself, exactly one published a salary: an F1 stock control and distribution apprenticeship at £26,000 a year, and only because UK law requires apprenticeship wages to be published. Everything else lists benefits instead.

The figures on Glassdoor, ZipRecruiter and careers blogs are algorithmic estimates, not data. One site applied the identical band to a systems technician, a motion designer and a London commercial executive. Treat them as noise. For perspective: McLaren Racing's accounts show its highest paid director took over £37 million in 2024, so any "average salary" figure with that inside it means nothing.

Do these jobs travel to races?

Mostly no, and this surprises people. Almost every commercial, finance, marketing and logistics job in F1 is based at a factory or city office, with race attendance "as required". Formula 1 itself lists four Grand Prix paddock passes per season as a staff benefit, not a duty. The genuinely travelling roles are on the promoter, hospitality, freight and trackside supplier side.

Do I need to be good at physics?

For everything in this guide, no. English and Mathematics carry far more weight. Physics matters for the engineering guide, which is a separate article.

Is it too late if I am 17?

No. Bradley Lord, now deputy team principal at Mercedes, read English and French at university and started in F1 as a translator. Emily Prazer, now Chief Commercial Officer of Formula 1, has a degree in sports and physical education and spent five years at an agency first. Ellie Norman became F1's first chief marketing officer with no motorsport background at all, after Honda and Virgin Media. One of the Malaysians in the Mercedes garage joined at 36.

Should I do a motorsport-specific degree?

For the careers in this guide, no. Across every commercial, finance, media and logistics advertisement we read, not one asked for a motorsport degree, and several said motorsport experience was "a bonus, not a requirement". Study the discipline, not the sport.

What can I do before the Sepang race in October?

Contact Sepang International Circuit about the volunteer, marshal and internship routes and ask about age eligibility. Look into joining a MAM-affiliated club. Register for STEM Racing Malaysia. If you shoot or write, go to a local karting event and start building work. And if you get to the race, watch how the event is run rather than only watching the cars: the retail, the hospitality, the marshals, the media centre, the freight. Those are the jobs.

Verified July 2026. Tuition fees, visa rules and job requirements change every year, and several figures here were correct on the day we checked them. Check current details with us before making a decision. Nothing in this guide is immigration advice.

This content is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to Formula 1.