[h=2]Engineering student joins Dale Coyne Racing[/h] Saturday, 16 September 2017
By Marshall Pruett (words and images)
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Dale Coyne Racing's newest engineer came to the team through one of the more interesting pathways to the IndyCar paddock.
California's Trevor Green-Smith wanted to become a race engineer, yet lacked the experiential education with the vehicles he aspired to tune, needed to fast-track the years of learning that would be required to earn a position on the timing stand, and turned two to unique solutions.
His first course of action was to work under Jon Ennik, 1998 CAM Indy 500 Mechanic of the Year, preparing and running vintage Formula 1 cars for renowned Bay Area racecar restorer Phil Reilly. With a proper grasp of the meticulous expectations that come with building and maintaining legendary grand prix cars from the 1960s and 1970s, Green-Smith moved to England to pursue his Bachelors of Motorsport Engineering at Oxford Brookes University.
While there, he gained firsthand experience in the World Series by Renault, the ELMS and at the 24 Hours of Le Mans with Nissan/Cosworth. And with his degree in hand, Green-Smith returned to Northern California, asked Ennik to make an introduction to an old colleague, reached out to DCR race engineer Michael Cannon and in early August relocated to Illinois to work full-time under Cannon on Ed Jones' No. 19 Honda.
"It's been an incredible, rapid education so far," Green-Smith told
RACER. "It's definitely a far higher and more sophisticated level than anything I did freelance in Europe, so it's been a lot to take in."
Cannon, who has mentored a number of young race engineers – including this writer – has been impressed by his new No. 2.
"I think nowadays, you've got to be a proper degreed engineer in order to move forward in this [sport]," he said. "The thing that appealed to us as a team, not just me, was Trevor and how he got to where he got to. I mean, he was a practical mechanic. He knows how things go together, he showed the desire by pursuing that, then he showed the desire by moving all the way to England and pursuing a degree there."