Lumen Summer 2018 - Flipbook - Page 29
SPORT
K
irby Nankivell and Jordan Yeomans
are young, confident and can keep
a cool head – essential for engineers
working trackside at some of the
country’s biggest car racing events.
While at University, both Kirby and Jordan
participated in Forumula SAE, an annual
competition that sees University students form
and manage a racing team and design and build
a Formula-style race car to compete against
other University teams.
Perseverance pays off for Kirby
LIFE
in the
FAST
LANE
Fast cars. Cool heads.
Big bucks. Welcome to
the world of motorsport.
STORY BY KELLY BROWN
Kirby’s journey to motorsport success took
many twists and turns. And that’s even before
the tenacious race engineer graduated with a
Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering from the
University of Adelaide.
He’d built an experimental hybrid engine for
the Waterloo Centre for Automotive Research
(WatCAR) in Canada, participated in Formula
Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) teams
at three universities, was instrumental in making
Formula SAE an extracurricular activity for
University of Adelaide students, and interned
for oil and gas giant ConocoPhillips – all while
still studying.
Kirby thought he had secured his first job in
motorsport when he was tentatively offered an
assistant engineer position in the V8 supercar
team with which he had done work experience
while at university.
“Unfortunately the job fell through when the
team lost a major sponsor,” he said.
Kirby got another shot while contracting for
Queensland based engineering company Pace
Innovations, which had a car racing program in
New Zealand. Despite having no professional
experience outside of Formula SAE, Kirby was
asked to be the company’s race engineer.
“To this day, they still give me grief about how
bad I was,” he said.
“I’ve never said no to anything, even if I
thought I was going to be terrible at it.
Everything is a learning experience.”
Kirby’s big break came after Pace Innovations
completed its design for the ‘Car of the Future’
for V8 supercars and started providing
engineering services for these cars at the
Clipsal 500 (now the Adelaide 500).
Kirby asked if he could go along to the event
and help out. It was here he met Matt Stone,
son of Jimmy Stone from the famous Stone
Brothers Racing team. Matt was competing in
the Dunlop Super2 Series at the Clipsal 500
and Kirby helped him as a data engineer for the
weekend.
ALUMNI MAGAZINE - SUMMER 2018
27
