McLaren supercars: Female engineers on their dream job

In 2011, the brand McLaren, famous for Formula 1 racing, returned to building road supercars. The company now produces luxury vehicles at its factories in Woking and Rotherham. The BBC's We Are England film-makers have been to find out what it takes to build a supercar and speak to some of the men and increasing number of women working in the industry.

"There's no feeling quite like seeing the product on the road, as what we call 'in the wild'," said Holly Yeomans.

Holly is a senior project engineer at McLaren's Woking factory. She dreams of inspiring other girls to follow a similar career path and is a STEM ambassador, visiting schools to speak to pupils about careers in science, technology, engineering and maths.

It was only when she was 18 that Holly understood what it was to be an engineer, "I had heard there was a particular female that had won as part of a Le Mans team as a race engineer. It wasn't until then, I thought 'that's cool, is that an engineer? I want to be that."

But it was not easy. Other people's attitudes were challenging, she said. When Holly began to gain an interest in engineering she said people joked about her and told her "she should be in the kitchen".

"Ten-year-old Holly never thought she would be sat here doing this, " she said. "It's a big deal."

In 2018, McLaren opened a £50m factory at a site in Rotherham, creating more than 100 jobs in the area. It is where the company builds the chassis of its cars, which are then sent on to the Woking factory.

Claire Smith, 31, is a team leader at the site. "When we heard about McLaren coming to the local area, it was massive to us," she said. "We're not used to having such big companies here. We're not used to seeing supercars like this every day."

Claire works preparing the carbon fibre cut-outs for the moulding machine, to create the car's chassis. She uses a stacking iron that heats up to 170C to bind parts of the frame together.

She said the company has been a "welcoming" and accepting place to work. "I enjoy what I do. When I see one of our cars on the road I can say that I was part of making that supercar. It's a nice feeling."

Harrison Vinall, 21, followed his older brother Sam into the company.

"As soon as I heard McLaren were setting up a facility up here I applied as soon as I could," he said. "There wasn't an automotive company in our city at the time, it was never something we even thought was achievable, so for it to be here now is absolutely amazing."

Harrison works in quality control at the factory, while Sam works in the engineering team. Harrison was 18 when he started working alongside his big brother and Sam said: "I'm really proud of him, he's taken the opportunities that have come to him and ran with them himself."

The company's Woking factory employs more than 3,000 people and prices for the latest McLaren supercar, which is made there, start at around £190,000.

Shihui Liu is a principal engineer in electric drive controls and is part of the team that designs the control systems inside the cars.

"From a very young age I realised that I'm very good at maths," she laughed. "For me, maths is beautiful because it provides a different dimension of language for you to explain the real world."

Shihui has lived in England for eight years and said her "role model" is her mother, who works as a professor of mechanical engineering in China.

"It was always natural for me that women can do engineering," she said. "There's nothing women can't do."

Research shows more women are pursuing careers in the industry. According to Engineering UK, 562,000 women worked in engineering in 2010 but by 2021 that number had increased to 936,000.

Once a year the staff at McLaren's two factories meet up to compete against each other in a football tournament. Although it gets competitive, Claire said: "It's like a family, really."

We Make Supercars will be broadcast on Friday 11 November at 7.30pm on BBC One in Yorkshire, the North West and Lincolnshire and will be available on the iPlayer straight after.

Follow BBC Yorkshire on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Send your story ideas to [email protected].