TEAM
“Science is about knowing; engineering is about doing.”
– Henry Petroski
Leadership Team
Andy Tidy Head of Design Office
Andy has developed a specialist knowledge in composite design from his impressive career portfolio. You can tell how much he loves motorsport, just from looking at the experience he brings to the team! He also makes time for some tennis and MTB.
Education: Engineering Technology / Manufacturing & Production Engineering – Chichester / Worthing College
Experience: 14 years in automotive; IAD, McLaren Cars, G Force Technologies. 22 years in motorsport; McLaren, Honda, Williams, Super Aguri.
Career Milestones: Switching from a roadcar design consultancy to F1 and subsequently being involved with the design of Formula Nippon, Indy Car & LMP1 Sportscars.
Chris Harris Head of Calculations
Chris is charged with leading stress and aerodynamics groups and responsible for supporting across all projects. He’s motivated by working an F1-style environment, and working across a range of different projects. Outside of work, he likes to restore classic cars, play guitar and travel!
Education: Master of Automotive Engineering at the Chalmers University in Sweden
Experience: 15 years in motorsport; Ford Motorsport, GM Motorsport, Lotus/Renault. 8 years in automotive; General Motors.
Career Milestone: “Super simple one, joining MGI.”
Cris Hiche Commercial Director
Cris is a man with many hats at MGI; overseeing marketing, finance and business development. A Stress Engineer by trade but can also be found playing baseball internationally for the Chilean National Team.
Education: Mechanical Engineering at Arizona State University with a B.Sc. Mechanical Engineering and a M.Sc. Mechanical Engineering (Equiv. to a MRes in UK)
Experience: 5+ years in motorsport; Force India, Lotus/Renault. 3+ years in healthcare; Siemens Healthineers. 3+ years in eVTOL consultancy.
Career Milestone: “Working in F1 was definitely a career milestone as it was always my dream job. To achieve this straight out of university made it much more special. Pivoting from an engineering to a commercial role has also been a significant milestone as I have studied and searched opportunities to switch to a commercial role as it’s been one of my passions for a while.”
Mike Gascoyne CEO, CTO and Founder of MGI Engineering Ltd
The boss, the visionary, the founder. Mike defines the very principles on what MGI is founded on, the Formula 1 mindset and his desire to bring F1 expertise in design and engineering to mainstream engineering sectors and especially green sustainable sectors such as EV and EVTOL. Outside of work, you can find Mike playing cricket, off-shore sailing or on walks with Merlin.
Education: University of Cambridge, UK — BA in Engineering, Fluid Mechanics, 1982 – 1988 and Wymondham College 1974-1981, where he was taught by one of his favourite teachers and personal inspiration, Dave Gorman.
Experience: 25+ years in F1; McLaren, Tyrell, Sauber, Jordan, Renault, Force India and Caterham. 3+years in eVTOL consultancy.
Career Milestone: “In 2009, through MGI consultancy, I started an F1 team from scratch, Caterham F1, a feat completely unheard of in this modern era of Formula 1. We were a small team, with limited budget, but we were able to design a car that could compete at the highest level of motorsport.”
James East Head of Systems Integration
James is our Head of Systems, having spent many years in F1 working on Powertrain installations and their associated sub-systems such as cooling, fuel, hydraulics, and electronics packaging. His career in F1 also covered several years designing structural composite components.
Education: B.Eng. (Hons) Automotive/Motorsport Engineering at Oxford Brookes University, HND Automotive Engineering at Coventry University
Experience: 21+ years in motorsport and automotive; Scuderia Toro Rosso, Marussia, Williams, European Formula Racing / European Minardi. 3.5+ years in aerospace.
Career Milestone: “Taking my experiences from F1 and leading a small design team at MGI on the installation of a twin-turbo V6 engine into the back of a 2016 F1 car to create one of the fastest privately-owned track day cars in the world.”
Head of Mechanical Design
Merlin The Dog
The family dog and Mike’s chief confidant and always by his side, even during the test flights!
Senior Engineering Team
Working alongside our heads of departments is our core team of experienced senior engineers, capable of delivering full engineering solutions and mentoring our junior engineers. Their experience and ability provides further depth and support to our core engineering team.
Future Engineers
At MGI Engineering, we are proud of our prestigious Formula 1 background and the experience of our senior team members, but we also feel passionately about developing and nurturing young engineers of the future. Our team consists of a strong core of engineers with experience from multiple engineering sectors which we actively sought after to broaden our knowledge and skill base. Having a diverse workforce strengthens us as an organisation and is at the core of MGI’s philosophy.
In keeping with our philosophy, we sponsor an engineering learning course at Churchill College – University of Cambridge. The programme is an extra-curriculum course designed to help engineering students work on real-world problems and develop the skills they will need to succeed in their career.
We also offer a graduate recruitment and internship programme to develop young engineers. We train them in the techniques used in fields like Formula 1 to design and build real-world vehicles, deliver them on-time and perform as intended.
Several of our early graduate engineers are now in project leader roles across a range of disciplines at MGI. We are proud to mentor new generations of young, talented engineers to support them in their professional development.
Advisory Board
Careers
We are always looking to expand our team and expertise, if you are interested in working with us please send your CV to PeopleOperations@mgiengineering.com