Background

Stephanie Travers was one of more than 7,000 applicants for PETRONAS's Trackside Fluid Engineer search ahead of the 2019 F1 season, and completed five levels of selection, according to PETRONAS's own announcement.

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In July 2020, Travers joined Lewis Hamilton on the podium at the Styrian Grand Prix to receive Mercedes' constructors' trophy, and Hamilton called her the first Black woman to stand on an F1 podium.

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Emmanuel Muzangaza is a co-author of peer-reviewed research on 3D printing titanium alloys, published in 2022, in which he generated the machine files and performed the builds.

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Samantha Nyikadzino, who studied electrical engineering at NUST in Bulawayo, started as an electronics design engineer at Mercedes-AMG Petronas on 12 September 2022.

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Formula 1 teams run on engineers more than drivers, and a handful of them are Zimbabwean. Three are on public record: one who has just moved teams, one in electronics design, and one who helps print metal parts for a race car.

Stephanie Travers, fluids, now at Aston Martin

Travers was born in Harare. She told Imperial College London's alumni magazine that weekends growing up were about watching F1 with her family, that her dad and grandfather both had engineering workshops, and that she moved to the UK aged 10. BusinessDay reported in 2020 that the family emigrated in 2004. She studied chemical engineering at the University of Bradford and Imperial, then worked as a reliability engineer at BASF, according to Bradford's alumni profile, and applied when PETRONAS launched its global search.

PETRONAS's own 2019 announcement says she beat 7,000 other applicants through five levels of selection, ending with an interview with the PETRONAS Lubricants International chief executive, to become one of two Trackside Fluid Engineers working with Mercedes. BusinessDay adds that the final stage included a task across Kuala Lumpur to find that chief executive.

The job is hands-on chemistry. Travers told Imperial she used a spectrometer, a gas chromatograph and a viscometer to check fluids against FIA regulations, keep the engine performing and measure wear on the engine and gearbox. Fuel contamination can mean disqualification from a race weekend, she said. BusinessDay's figures for a race weekend, covering her and a colleague, were nine engine oil and six transmission samples per car, 70 to 80 fuel samples, and 132 oil tests.

At the 2020 Styrian Grand Prix, team principal Toto Wolff chose who would represent Mercedes on the podium, and BusinessDay reports Travers was asked up while she was still celebrating on the pit wall. Hamilton publicly called her the first Black woman to stand on an F1 podium, according to Formula1.com. She later moved to Hamilton's Extreme E team, Team X44, and to his charity Mission 44. In February 2026, GPFans reported she had left Mission 44 to join Aramco as a Senior Trackside Fluid Engineer, supporting the Aston Martin Aramco team. An Aramco publication from July 2026 lists her in that role.

Samantha Nyikadzino, electronics, Mercedes

Scrolla.Africa reported in September 2022 that Nyikadzino had joined Mercedes-AMG Petronas as a design engineer, starting on 12 September at age 26. She completed an electrical engineering degree at the National University of Science and Technology in Bulawayo, another at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, and a degree in applied mathematics and computer science at the University of South Africa. She wrote on Twitter that she was "geeked."

One honest limit: the sources for her are from the time she joined, and we could not find a Mercedes team page that names her. We are reporting what she and the press said then, and we have not confirmed her current role.

Emmanuel Muzangaza, metal 3D printing, Aston Martin

Muzangaza's record is the most documented in research papers. The University of Birmingham's research portal lists him as a co-author of a 2022 paper in Metallurgical and Materials Transactions A on hybrid electron beam powder bed fusion of the titanium alloy Ti-6Al-4V. The paper's author notes say he generated the machine files and performed the builds, using Manufacturing Technology Centre facilities and EU AMAZE project funding.

His LinkedIn profile, which is self-reported, shows research roles at the Manufacturing Technology Centre in Coventry from 2012 to 2021, then the Digital Manufacturing Centre at Silverstone, and then Aston Martin F1 from July 2024, where it lists him as Additive Manufacturing Leader, Metallics. A September 2026 post by a Sheffield metal printing firm names him as being from the Aston Martin F1 team, which independently supports the Aston Martin link. Aston Martin's own site does not name him, but it confirms the setting: the team's new Silverstone technology campus opened in July 2023.

Additive manufacturing is not a gimmick in F1. According to the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Aston Martin Aramco engineers use it to produce parts overnight, and McLaren uses stereolithography to make more than 9,000 components a year. 3Dnatives adds that printing complements machining and moulding rather than replacing them, and that the FIA's approved materials list limits what teams can use.

He also posted on LinkedIn that a Zimbabwean diaspora organisation gave him a technology and innovation award in 2025. Afri3D Tech, a company he is linked to, describes itself on its own website as Africa's first mobile innovation lab, taking 3D printing education to schools. That is the company's description, and we found no independent reporting on its results, so treat it as a stated aim.

What it means

The three jobs cover chemistry, electronics and manufacturing, and none required a motorsport degree first. Travers studied chemical engineering, Nyikadzino electrical engineering, and Muzangaza's route ran through materials engineering and years of metal 3D printing research. For students in Harare, Gweru or Bulawayo, the practical lesson is that strong fundamentals in science, maths and computing travel, and that the route often runs through other high-tech industries first.

The caution is that three public stories do not make a formal route from Zimbabwe to F1. Travers moved to the UK as a child and trained there, Nyikadzino trained in Zimbabwe and South Africa, and Muzangaza's career has been in the UK. Nothing in these sources describes a programme in Zimbabwe feeding teams.

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Researched and drafted with the help of AI tools, then fact-checked and edited by our team. How we work.

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Rufaro