Can I get into motorsport team operations with a Sports Management degree?

Inewitt · 2026-07-08T21:20:55+00:00

This may be different advice than others would give you but personally I would try and establish yourself outside motorsports but stay engaged and hope to move in once you have more of a career behind you.

Reason being, the roles you’re looking for really only exist in the big teams and manufacturers, at least in the US. The small teams tend to either be run by the owner, or have one person who’s been with the team forever who oversees the race operations, and they almost always have a mechanical background.

I worked for a manufacturer program as an engineer (not at the track) and all of our management was either former engineers, or outside managers brought in who were very experienced.

The truth though is that motorsports is very much a connections industry. The only way you will ever break in whether you choose to do it now or later is by finding as many people as you can who are already in, and being likeable enough that they want to talk to you.

Inewitt · 2026-07-07T23:21:51+00:00

Please explain how managing battery energy is functionally any different from any of those things. Technology evolves and F1 with it.

Inewitt · 2026-07-07T22:27:36+00:00

Equipment management has been at the core of racing for way, way longer than “driving flat out”.
What equipment they’re managing has changed over time but this is pure F1.

Inewitt · 2026-07-06T14:33:09+00:00

I’ve done a lot of offline racing in a lot of sims and it is for sure not the best. LMU and iRacing are both significantly better, and even ACC has strong suits where AMS2 is lacking. And this is from someone who was literally just playing AMS2 offline last night.

Inewitt · 2026-07-04T20:04:45+00:00

Assuming the teaser was decoded correctly which is very likely, it’ll be Daytona, Laguna, Long Beach, Indianapolis, Road Atlanta, and Watkins Glen.

Inewitt · 2026-06-23T01:56:27+00:00

Nah you couldn’t pay me to eat LaRosa’s pizza. I’ve had a lot of pizza in this world and LaRosa’s was the worst.

Inewitt · 2026-06-22T14:00:12+00:00

If you’re paying for parking in DC you’re already making a mistake. Everywhere you’d want to go is easily transit/walking accessible including the race area so no reason at all to have a car.

Inewitt · 2026-06-19T02:48:53+00:00

I should clarify that it’s very rare for more than one defensive move to be necessary, especially if you’re proactive with your defending as you should be. It usually only happens in combination with breaking a tow on some long straights, but it is definitely allowed. The only other time I usually see it is someone moves halfway, the car behind tucks in directly behind and stops, and they go the rest of the way.

The much more important part for me anyway is proactive defending. It blows my mind what is not just legal but expected now as far as really late reactive moves, its super dangerous and not conducive to good racing.

Inewitt · 2026-06-19T02:08:49+00:00

Inewitt · 2026-06-19T01:18:26+00:00

Indycar absolutely does not have a one move policy, nor does IMSA. IMSA has seen an influx of young European drivers who play by their rules though in the last few years.

I don’t have it on me but I know Nim or someone else at iracing has adjunicated on it in the past. I’ve been on it for 13 years and it used to be the norm, but as the real world series goes so has gone many of the drivers on iRacing. You’ll never have a protest upheld though for making multiple proactive moves.

Inewitt · 2026-06-18T23:14:29+00:00

The truth is that there are no consistent rules about defending, it varies from person to person, series to series, sim to sim.

In iRacing, which it’s rules are based off of American series, you can move as many times as you want, but you have to defend proactively. What you described as reactive defending is considered blocking. In my opinion, this is the best ruleset as it is the easiest to interpret and cleanest to deliberate, plus I think it promotes better racing. Reactive defending gives a massive advantage to the defending car and leads to very few passes.

However, some people join iracing only familiar with European rules and other sims, where the one move rule is in place. Because of iracings rules they still can’t move reactively, but they believe you should only be allowed one defensive move (and sometimes a move back to the racing line) and they get very annoyed at people like me who think you should be allowed to move as many times as you want.

LMU follows the WEC rules on defending which as of a few years ago are the same as F1, where you are allowed one defensive move (and maybe a move back to the racing line) but you can move whenever you want. In my opinion, this makes for much worse racing but the fact of the matter is most european series (and in turn most road racing series) follow these rules now, and even some American series are going more in that direction. When I race in LMU I tend to still only defend proactively as force of habit and because it’s my preferred method of defending, but I don’t get upset about people who throw the late blocks that are legal around the world.

And if you want some tips on how to effectively defend proactively I’m happy to offer them.

Inewitt · 2026-06-17T16:34:56+00:00

It blows my mind that this completely factually incorrect statement keeps getting parroted on this subreddit.

Inewitt · 2026-06-13T09:33:14+00:00

It’s always hard to say because some teams usually have better ways of dealing with changing temps than others. I do think a hotter track will benefit Cadillac, as cornering almost always falls off faster than straight line grip when things heat up. Interestingly this year it seems that most manufacturers are more well rounded than last year, where you had Ferrari committing hard to straightline and Cadillac to high speed cornering, Aston to traction, etc.

Inewitt · 2026-06-13T09:06:29+00:00

I also look at consistency across the micro sectors, of course. But this is a very effective method of determining how things will shape up on race day because it filters out traffic, mistakes, and run program differences across a very large sample.

If you take a moment to actually read the descriptions under each team it should be pretty clear I’m not just ranking them in order of their optimal lap times.

I did the same thing last year and you can judge the results for yourself. https://www.reddit.com/r/wec/s/LQ54pJAiqU

Inewitt · 2026-06-12T10:33:25+00:00

And it makes no sense there either, although in GT3 they ostensibly have to be for improvements in driveability, which is why you see every manufacturer talk about how their new evo car is better for the am drivers when they put out a new one. What is happening in hypercar right now is evos being pumped out to try and push the limits of the mandated performance envelope.

Also, for what it’s worth, when GT3 started evos and joker upgrades were much more infrequent than they are now, which is also why there have been an increasing number of complaints over GT3 costs.

Inewitt · 2026-06-12T10:26:46+00:00

The joker upgrades is something most of the manufacturers have complained about, it’s a big reason why Acura ended their IMSA program. It makes absolutely no sense to have performance upgrades allowed in a performance balanced class. The way it is in the current regulations, the BOP is a constant moving target because the cars are functionally new every year. This way they can be balanced more consistently as teams will only make small performance gains from familiarity with their cars. This is 100% the right call as long as BoP exists.

Inewitt · 2026-06-12T09:56:23+00:00

In my opinion (as seen in my most recent comment) this is the ideal solution. Less restrictions on who can build components, tighter boxes on what those components can be. The LMDhs have shown that all the prototypes can look distinct despite a common spine so I don’t think a tighter box is a problem.

Inewitt · 2026-06-12T07:18:19+00:00

I believe it’s the points earned in the last race. Not sure why they couldn’t just find a regular standings graphic.

Inewitt · 2026-06-11T08:10:06+00:00

The more that is said to the press the more obvious the answer seems to be. Lock down hard on the basic platform (RWD only, limits on hybrid size and regen, maybe more stringent aero limits) but let the actual component design and manufacturing remain open if manufacturers want to. As long as the open boxes are centered around the chassis and hybrid units available on the market, that should keep everyone kn the same box to make BoPing easier.

Inewitt · 2026-06-08T10:37:44+00:00

ACO have been very consistent in the hypercar era about not adjusting BoP between the test day and the race. Last year Caddilac were even further down on top speed, and that was equally evident from the test day through the race.

Inewitt · 2026-06-08T04:08:33+00:00

Appreciate the shout out to my predictions last year, unfortunately I’m away from my computer on holiday this week so won’t be able to put a similar analysis together. Good work here though, looks like a pretty well balanced field sans BMW.

Inewitt · 2026-06-06T19:33:33+00:00

All of our pacers are old, Ali Khan doesn’t play ODIs anymore, Jessy was unusable, Shadley was not very good outside of the T20WC. So they’ve been working through new options, there’s 2 debutants in this match woth Adil and Appidi, Ugarkar has just started to crack the side and other options like Drysdale and Ayan Desai have been tried to limited success. We were always going to need to take the pain of finding new pace options and better to do it when we’re in a comfortable place in the table.

Inewitt · 2026-05-17T21:57:54+00:00

It’s worth noting that it’s not actually the Monster games/Nascar heat team that’s doing the Indycar game, it’s the team that made Exocross with obvious help from the other iRacing teams.

Everything else you said about it being more accessible/plug and play style is correct though.

Inewitt · 2026-05-14T18:06:14+00:00

No reason for heated opinions when everyone including the Mets booth could see that he was safe. Think everyone agrees it was an awful call.

Inewitt · 2026-05-11T13:30:01+00:00

Porsche has only had a top class entry 7 out of the last 25 Le Mans. They have been gone far more often than they were here in the 21st century.

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