Talia Hovsepian
In the world of Formula One racing, every tenth of a second matters. Just ask Talia Hovsepian, an applied mathematics and statistics student who’s spending her gap year in England as a student data scientist for the Racing Bulls, a team best known for its up-and-coming young drivers.
Last year in the Dutch Grand Prix, Racing Bull’s Isack Hadjar placed third, just 3.233 seconds after the winner. It was the team’s first podium finish since 2021. If Hadjar had been 2.5 seconds slower, he’d have missed the podium entirely.
Hovsepian’s world revolves around these numbers. Her job is to optimize. Which parts of the car can be made lighter? Can the downforce distribution be improved?
“Every car is overweight,” she says. For example, “There’s a particular sensor on our car that we wanted to replace because it weighs about a kilogram, which doesn’t sound like that much, but in the grand scope of the car, that’s about 3 seconds over the course of a Grand Prix.”
Ultimately, Hovsepian was able to reduce the sensor’s weight by 700 grams—a heavy lift in the world of F1.
“Knowing that the car is two-tenths of a second faster because of the work that I put in is really exciting for me.” — Talia Hovsepian
The data science group supports other areas at Racing Bulls. Teams such as aerodynamic performance bring problems or ideas to the data scientists, hoping the solution is somewhere in the numbers.
“We’ll spend two weeks doing exploratory analysis and tell them what it will take to solve their problem, and they tell us to proceed or that they have another priority,” Hovsepian says. “It’s almost like a project-oriented class where you have unlimited access to the professor because he sits right next to you all day. But at the same time, they trust me with the same caliber of projects of anyone else in the group.”
Hovsepian’s interest in Formula One racing was fueled at the Whiting School, where she gained experience designing off-road vehicles as a member of Blue Jay Racing. She also researched F1 racing strategy under Tamás Budavári, a professor of applied mathematics and statistics. “When I applied to Racing Bulls, I was lucky enough to have some actual experience in the field,” she says.
On race days, Hovsepian and the other students set up shop in the operations room. Although their headsets can hear other teams’ radios, Hovsepian spends most of the race focused on the Racing Bulls driver. Sometimes, the race ends without her even knowing who won. After working so hard on the car, the team’s success is her success.
“Not only do I get to do cool bits of mathematics that are really at the forefront of research and interesting theoretical stuff, but I get to see it being applied,” Hovespian says. “Knowing that the car is two-tenths of a second faster because of the work that I put in is really exciting for me.”
“These are all the things that I’ve been seeing on TV that I now get to have a part in,” she says. “In the entryway of our office is last year’s car, so every day I come in, I see a Formula One car and think, ‘Wow. I actually work for this team.’”