University of Pretoria (UP) graduate Keanan van Dyk recently landed an internship that’s likely to rank as a dream job for millions of racing fans out there – he’s now part of Oracle Red Bull Racing F1’s Aerodynamics Development team.

“Finding out that I got the placement was one of the happiest moments in my adult life,” Van Dyk says. “Fearing that my ears were deceiving me, I asked the human resources employee to repeat what they said several times, before finally accepting that I was indeed hearing correctly. After that I wasted no time and called every single close friend and family member.” 

Van Dyk says he’d been working on obtaining a position in a field related to aeroplane aerodynamics since early on during his undergraduate studies. It was only after he saw Netflix’s Drive to Survive series that he realised the world of F1 pushes aerodynamics to the limits. That’s what convinced him to change his goal from aeroplanes to motorsport.

He explains that, in his new job: “I am part of the Aerodynamic Development Team, meaning that we design aerodynamic surfaces such as the front, rear wing, etcetera, and simulate the generated flow field using computational fluid dynamics (CFD). We then analyse the flow field, looking at pressure distribution, losses, vortices, etcetera, and try to see what aerodynamic effects our surfaces had.”

He says if they notice possibilities for improvement, they then change the surfaces and repeat the entire process.

“If the CFD results show a promising gain in performance for a desired operating window, we send the surfaces to be constructed and tested in our wind-tunnel on our scaled model.  These results and then correlated back with the CFD results, and then decisions are made to either scrap the design or build full-scale versions for the race cars.” 

Van Dyk adds that, on race weekends, he gets the opportunity to be part of the Operations Room, from which a team supports the Race Engineering and Strategy Teams by reporting on situations on the tracks and doing video analysis, among other duties.

During this one-year internship at Red Bull Technology’s headquarters in Milton Keynes, England, Van Dyk will be stationed in the Aerodynamics department, but will also spend time working with other departments, including Race Engineering and Strategy.

Van Dyk obtained his Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical) degree from UP in 2022 and believes his UP studies created a strong basis of practical and theoretical knowledge.

“My degree offered constant opportunities to apply the theoretical knowledge gathered in the lectures to industry relevant problems,” he says. “Compared to other graduates coming from a BSc background I get the impression that they lack a lot of practical experience and typically only have theoretical experience to a level where it’s not valuable in the industry.”

He followed his UP studies up with a master’s degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Stuttgart in Germany.

Looking back at his earlier study days he admits that, like many peers, he faced a number of challenges academically, including feeling like he’d been thrown in the deep end with some modules and like he was expected to teach himself how to swim. “Compared with high school, this was one of the biggest adjustments. In the end, it was definitely the better approach.” 

He says his passion for engineering stems from a love of finding solutions. “Since I was a child, solving problems was always a fun activity, be it puzzles, Lego, maths… And engineering is essentially just that on steroids.”