In the summer of 2020, amid the relentless roar of Formula 1 engines at the Styrian Grand Prix, a quiet revolution took place. It was only the second race of the pandemic-delayed season, and the paddock was still adjusting to mask mandates, strict testing protocols, and empty grandstands. There was an eerie quiet, at least until the cars fired up.
That Sunday, Sir Lewis Hamilton took the checkered flag for Mercedes-AMG Petronas and made his way to the podium. But it was who joined him that marked the historic shift. Clad in black and silver team gear and eyes sharp with focus as they always are, Stephanie Travers — the then-26-year-old trackside fluid engineer — climbed upon the pedestal. Raising the Constructors’ Trophy in the air, she became the first Black woman to stand on a Formula 1 podium in the sport’s 70-year history. But for Travers, that moment wasn’t the finish line. It was more like the start of her ever-evolving mission to diversify a sport she loves and to help create an industry that is welcoming and representative of the world she grew up in.
Today, she’s traded her spot on the pit lane for a powerful new role: breaking down the systemic barriers that once stood in her way. As Senior Impact Manager at Mission 44 — the charity founded by seven-time world champion Hamilton — Travers is driving meaningful change by making motorsport and STEM careers more accessible to young people from underrepresented backgrounds.
“I made a way for myself to enter the sport,” she tells me during our interview in Miami ahead of the grand prix. “Now that I’m here, I want to open the door for more young people who look like me.”
Travers' path to Formula 1 was anything but straightforward. As a young woman of color with a passion for engineering, she encountered resistance from the very institutions meant to support her. In her final year of school, her teacher refused to submit her university application, doubting her ability to succeed as an engineer. With her parents’ support, Travers applied anyway. “I think I was really determined to prove that teacher wrong,” she says with a smile.
She graduated with honors from the University of Bradford and followed that with a Master’s in Advanced Chemical Engineering from Imperial College London. Not long after starting at the chemical giant BASF, Travers’s friend sent her a job listing: Mercedes-AMG Petronas was launching a global search for a trackside fluid engineer. “I actually really struggled during the application process,” she admits. “I didn’t believe I was going to get the job.” The word “global” in the title made her close the link the first time. It was only after her friend — and then her father — kept asking if she had applied that she reopened the listing and submitted her application.
Even then, doubt lingered. She’d applied to a role with 7,000 other applicants. “All the way down to the final five, I was the only woman and I thought, ‘this is where the journey ends.’” But she was wrong. “I still remember being told I was selected. I was in Kuala Lumpur at the time,” she says. “I was under NDA, so I couldn’t tell my family. But that excitement from within that I had, and seeing how proud both my parents were of me, meant the world to me, given how much they had sacrificed.”
When I ask if she remembers her first day on the job, she pauses and smiles as if she’s letting all the memories in. “The first day I walked into the Petronas Trackside Lab wearing the team kit, it was just a surreal moment,” she says. “It was a dream I had from being a young girl watching races with my family, and that dream finally materialized.”
She was a huge fan and now she’d landed her dream job. Of course, she was extremely nervous. She left her hotel, arrived at the track, and couldn’t help but look in every single direction. “I had been to races before as a fan, but only in General Admission — I couldn’t afford to be in the grandstands.” Now, she could cross over into the paddock. This was her new office. “I can remember that day so well,” she tells me. “Walking into the garage, seeing the car, and then seeing the lab I was going to be working in. I was greeted by everyone with open arms — from Toto Wolff and Lewis to the mechanics and engineers. That made me feel like this was the space I always wanted to be in.”
“It’s a feeling I will remember for life,” she continues. “It’s up there with the podium moment for me.”
When I ask if her parents’ sacrifice added pressure to succeed, Travers shakes her head gently. “Not added pressure, but rather a guiding north star,” she says. “Having the support from friends and family has given me so much drive and determination to just succeed and achieve.” But yes, she adds with a knowing smile, “at times this comes with added pressure. You never want to let your parents down.”
Her early passion for engineering had been nurtured by afternoons spent in her father and grandfather’s workshop in Zimbabwe. “It taught me so much both technically and about problem-solving, but also about determination and staying curious.” During her three seasons with Mercedes, Travers used those skills while working under immense pressure, analyzing fuel and lubricants in real-time to help optimize race performance. She wasn’t just in the room. She was at the table. And at the 2020 Styrian Grand Prix, she stood on the podium. “People think there are only four jobs in F1: driver, engineer, team principal, mechanic,” she explains. “But the reality is, there’s a whole ecosystem behind the scenes.”
In 2021, Sir Lewis Hamilton’s Hamilton Commission released a report on Black representation in U.K. motorsport that highlighted a despairing statistic: Black people made up only about one percent of Formula 1 employees. The ten-month-long study looked into systemic barriers that perpetuated the lack of diversity; the issues spanned the entire pipeline from early education to universities to hiring practices.
Travers had made it to the podium despite all that. But she knew her history-making moment should never have taken so long.
It was this realization that sparked her next move.
In 2022, Travers left her trackside role, first for the Associate Sporting Director position for Hamilton’s Extreme E team (X44), then to take on the job of Deputy Team Principal of the team, and finally to become a full-time leader in Mission 44’s growing portfolio of employment and inclusion initiatives.
Early in her time at Mercedes, “Lewis literally said to me, ‘I’m going to help you,’” she recalls. That help turned into a job offer, and a powerful platform to do what she had always wanted and what she is so incredibly well positioned to do — create systemic change
Mission 44’s goal is clear: to ensure every young person can thrive in education and access opportunities in STEM. From scholarship programs to school grants, the organization is investing in the next generation of talent with an emphasis on those who might otherwise be left behind.
Backed by the Royal Academy of Engineering, one of Mission 44’s first scholarship cohorts has already placed four students into full-time roles in the motorsport industry, working in areas ranging from aerodynamics to engine development.
The morning before we chatted at the Miami GP, Travers had brought a group of students to the track for a hands-on STEM learning experience: an engineer from Pirelli explained performance engineering and they learned about team roles during a Ferrari garage tour. The kids’ day had begun with a Q&A with Hamilton. “They didn’t know what a trackside fluid engineer was before today,” Travers says. “But after they saw it in action, they realized: that could be me.” Those moments are the heartbeat of her job: seeing eyes widen in real-time, young minds connecting the dots between textbook lessons and pit lane action.
I saw this for myself during one of these field trips at the Austin Grand Prix in 2024 where students were working on building the ultimate track for their cars during a Hot Wheels activation, a partner of Mission 44 and Formula 1. The kids’ eyes lit up when they understood that they were using the same mechanisms and tools, such as duct tape, that Formula 1 teams were using on their supercars. In that brief moment, it all seemed to click. It all seemed so possible and in reach for these students.
Ask Travers is she considers herself a role model, and she’ll demur. “I don’t actually class myself as a role model,” she says. The rejection is relatable — even laudable — but let’s be real: it couldn’t be farther from the truth. I’ve watched young girls and women light up as they see her, patiently waiting for a moment with her and leaving with a sense of hope after just a few minutes together.
And even the ever-modest Travers soon admits: “But when a young person comes up to me and says, ‘Can I reach out to you on LinkedIn?’ or ‘Can you mentor me?’ — that’s when I realize the impact.”
That impact isn’t just anecdotal. It’s systemic. Through Mission 44, Travers is helping to reshape not only the entry points into motorsport and STEM, but the very educational systems that support — or fail — young people from marginalized backgrounds. That includes diversifying the teacher workforce and ensuring role models exist in classrooms, not just on podiums.
“If you don’t have a teacher that looks like you, that understands the barriers at home,” she explains, “it’s really hard to thrive.”
Throughout our conversations, one theme kept returning: representation matters, but that it must be about more than visibility. It has to be representation in pursuit of real and lasting transformation.
Diverse teams bring diverse thinking. And in a sport where tenths of a second can separate victory from defeat, that diversity isn’t just a talking point — it’s a competitive advantage.
“A lot of teams are now deeply committed to diversifying their staff,” Travers explains. “It optimizes your race team. But the information about these roles still isn’t widely available. That’s the next barrier.”
She’s not only working to change the statistics; she’s proactively changing the narrative. Part of that means helping parents, not just young people. “A lot of parents still associate engineering with getting your hands dirty,” she said. “They don’t realize that engineering degrees can lead to roles in finance, aerodynamics, even team strategy.”
Travers believes that once you start the domino effect, everything from pipeline to finish line will be different. “That’s when we’re going to start seeing real change,” she tells me. “And you’re already starting to see it in the fanbase of Formula 1, how that’s evolved over the last few years, how they’re engaging with the sport.”
.jpg)
Travers overlooks Circuit of the Americas
There's a certain magic in meeting a person who refuses to be boxed in. Stephanie Travers is one of those people.
She speaks with the calm confidence of someone who has endured the hard road and emerged stronger. But she also radiates a rare kind of joy — a belief that change is not only necessary, but possible.
For now, Travers remains deeply committed to her work at Mission 44. But that doesn’t mean she’s let go of the dream she once declared: to become a team principal in Formula 1.
“The dream is still alive,” she says. “But right now, I’m learning so much — partnerships, contracts, proposal writing. The very things I would’ve gone to do in an MBA, I’m doing on the job.”
Her story is far from over. But one thing is clear: wherever she goes next, Travers won’t just open doors. She’ll be building new ones.
She knows that the future of Formula 1 belongs to those who redesign it.
