Petra is racing towards a math-led future thanks to V8 cooldrive supercar’s team
Petra isn’t just a Year 12 student from Mparntwe (Alice Springs), she’s a force of nature – especially when it comes to her love of cars and racing.
“It’s been in my blood all my life. Both my parents race off-road and I’ve raced speedway for the past six odd years,” she says.
Maths is Petra’s favourite subject at school – her passion for it even led her to win the Indigenous Science
Achievement Award at Flinders University. Now, she’s learning just how much maths is involved in racing cars.
Petra recently completed a Certificate II in Automotive, for which she did a training work placement with the V8 CoolDrive supercar team. In her certificate, Petra says she got to experience what it felt like “to be a real mechanical engineer,” as she pulled cars apart, looked at all the components and put them back together again.
Petra would also measure and analyse her lap times from new race meetings and previous race meetings.
“I’d compare the two and see where I’d improved. It could be by one-point-something seconds,” she says.
In racing, you also need maths skills to monitor fuel consumption. This can vary a lot depending on how you drive and how many kilometres the race is. “My tank usually takes up a whole race meet,” Petra says.
Initially, Petra wanted to be an engineer with the supercar team but now she plans to explore her engineering options through the Australian Defence Force Gap Year. This cool program will allow her to try out different areas of engineering while getting paid, without any long-term commitment!
Her tip for anyone wanting to balance studying a VET course while in high school? “Look for advice from your teachers. They took into consideration that I was only in school four days a week and would give me extensions, or occasionally sit with me during lunchtime or recess.”
A version of this article also appears in our current issue of Careers with STEM: Maths and Data 2025.
