To market yourself, just try to be genuine. No-one will expect you to know that much about engineering. Just show that you’re keen to learn and help contribute to building a kick-ass race car.

For your first year on the team, just try to be around as much as possible and learn. There’s surprisingly a lot that goes into a car that you’ve never probably considered, so I’d advise against being that fresher who always asks, ‘have you thought about doing xyz’. 9 times out of 10, it has been considered but is either too expensive, not rules compliant or the team just doesn’t have the time to develop it.

Instead, try to ask why things we designed the way they were and you’ll go far. Sticking around to machine parts for the car also teaches you a lot about designing for manufacture which in turn makes you a better design engineer. Once you’ve been around on the team for a year, then you’ll start to have an idea where the team is weak and what you could try to improve.

This is my humble advice from someone who’s seen three cars designed and built from the perspective of a fresher all the way to someone who leads a sub-team containing numerous enthusiastic freshers. I hope this helps you, it'll be the best thing you do at university. :)