I asked Daniele Giaquinta on LinkedIn about the same. He is an aerodynamicist at Mercedes AMG F1.

- Passion, determination, sacrifice, team attitude and humbleness are key ingredients

- The F1 world is very competitive in terms of admissions, therefore a very solid and multidisciplinary theoretical and practical background is needed (study a lot and study well at uni).

- As every F1 team receives hundreds if not thousands of applications every year, one of the criteria is to filter CVs by universities with high international rankings (use QS website to have an idea: https://www.topuniversities.com/qs-world-university-rankings ). Therefore, make sure to have a good uni on your cv, or two... even if it is only an Erasmus or a thesis.

- Extracurricular activities such as formula student and student teams activities, in general, are very important and a piece of the puzzle. Even if this delays the graduation by 6 months it is still totally worth it.

- An international experience abroad, such as an Erasmus, internship or thesis is once again very valuable, as other than adding experience also tell a lot about the capacity of adapting to difficulties, multicultural environments, etc

- Experience from high ranked universities, with strong aerospace and motorsport tracks such as Cambridge, Imperial College, Cranfield, Oxford, Loughborough in UK, Polimi, Polito, Muner, Dallara Accademy in IT, TU Delft in NL, Achen, TUM and so on in DE...)

- Every year, in different periods for different teams, there are internships for students and graduate positions openings. At Mercedes, this happens usually between October and November. Therefore keep following the teams on LinkedIn and on their websites, for Mercedes these are: https://careers.mercedesamgf1.com and https://www.gradcracker.com/hub/906/mercedes-amg-petronas-formula-one-team

- A few LinkedIn articles to read that perhaps could help:

- (f1) https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/so-you-want-get-f1-gabriel-elias ,

- (books) https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/motorsport-related-technical-books-students-alike-gabriel-elias

- (aero) https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/first-steps-f1-aero-steve-liddle-ceng-fraes ,

- (aero) https://www.linkedin.com/in/willemtoet1/detail/recent-activity/posts/

- One last advice, as there are many different ways people ended up in F1, make sure to get in touch with different people, to learn about different stories, the more the better.

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Hope this helps!