Durham’s Careers and Enterprise team organised something a little out of the ordinary, a campus visit from the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula One Team. I’m an intern with Careers Connect and was involved in promoting the event, so I had a sense of what was planned, but experiencing it on the day was something else entirely!
The show car
The day started with the F1 show car on display at Library Square, and it drew a crowd almost immediately. Seeing a Formula 1 car in person is genuinely different from watching one on screen, the proportions, the detail in the bodywork. Students who had never watched a race in their lives were stopping to look.
Alongside the car, there was a pop-up stand with race helmets and driver kits that visitors could handle directly. It’s a small thing, but getting to hold a helmet -feeling the weight of it, understanding what a driver wears for two hours at race pace added a layer of context that you don’t get from watching from a distance.
The Durham community is showing up
What stood out during the day was the diversity of students who attended. Dedicated F1 fans, students from non-technical disciplines who were simply curious, people who had spotted the car on their way to a lecture and decided to stay. The room for the talk was full, and the level of engagement throughout -the questions people asked – reflected a Durham student community that is genuinely interested in understanding the world beyond the lecture hall. The team ambassadors were approachable and generous with their time, and the conversations felt natural.
The careers talk
The centrepiece of the day was an employability session led by Chief Engineer Richard Pattinson. The session covered three key areas: why people are drawn to work in Formula 1, what life inside the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS team actually looks like day-to-day, and how the team approaches recruitment. Hearing this directly from someone embedded in the organisation made the advice feel specific and credible in a way that generic careers guidance often isn’t.
The informal networking session that followed with members of the F1 team over tea and cake gave us the chance to continue those conversations in a more relaxed setting. From a career development perspective, that kind of direct access to industry professionals is difficult to replicate.
A personal note
As an intern with Careers Connect, I was responsible for creating the promotional materials for this event – the social media content, digital screens, and physical boards across campus. It was my first experience of managing a full creative brief independently, and seeing students engage with the event on the day made the process feel worthwhile in a very concrete way. It was a good reminder that the behind-the-scenes work in careers and events has a real impact on the student experience!
Thank you to the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula One Team for their time and openness, and to the Careers and Enterprise team for putting together this event.
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