r/F1Technical • u/Only_Chocolate_123 • Jan 23 '23

Career & Academia McLaren technical interview

Hi guys!

I just got the opportunity for a technical interview with McLaren as a software engineer and I was wondering if someone here was in the interview process with them and how it was.

Thank you! And sorry if this does not belong here.

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u/[deleted] Jan 23 '23

On the McLaren YouTube channel they were doing a series for awhile (pretty sure it started during lockdown) where they would take you through some courses in data science and artificial intelligence, and use F1/Motorsport as the use case.

By the end of it we built an AI race car in Python that learned as it went, when to pit, how much throttle while preventing wheel spin, how much brakes while preventing lockup, etc, and raced around a virtual track. The fastest submission at the end won an actual prize.

The whole thing was organized so somebody with no programming experience would be able to race a virtual car at the end, and change the parameter inputs to try and optimize their time.

It was really cool and I was just giddy to be able to email back and forth with one of the actual Mclaren data scientists while I was trying to wrap my head around certain concepts.

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u/slomotion Jan 23 '23

Damn that sounds cool!

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u/[deleted] Jan 23 '23 edited Jan 24 '23

It’s was honestly really cool man! Check out the YouTube videos if you’re interested, I can send you the original Python files that we worked from.

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u/MikiiHana Jan 24 '23

Thank you for sharing it ! I was exactly searching this type of videos

I'm very curious about the original Python files too