PORSCHE - SP MOTORSPORTS
PARTS R&D ENGINEERING INTERN
A summer internship in the Parts R&D Development department at Porsche SP Motorsports, a shop focused on building and developing high performance Porsche race and track vehicles. The department developed aftermarket performance parts sold to customers looking to upgrade their stock cars. The work spanned the full development cycle, from designing components and applying design for manufacturing to release parts for CNC machining, to hands on hardware assembly and on track testing. I worked across both prototype and production builds, contributing to performance components and data acquisition systems while gaining direct exposure to how parts move from concept to a customer ready product.
Performance Components
I designed a set of aftermarket performance and comfort components for customers upgrading their stock Porsche cars, taken from concept through CAD, design for manufacturing, and CNC machining.
Seat Tilt Kits. A bolt on kit that changes the mounting angle of the seat to give the driver a more relaxed, reclined driving position. The design focused on a clean fit to the existing seat mounts and a simple installation customers could do themselves without specialized tools, while keeping the seat securely located under normal driving loads.
Air Guides. Aerodynamic deflectors mounted at the corner of the door, just ahead of the front side mirrors, designed to smooth the air flowing down the side of the car and reduce drag. The work involved shaping the guide profile and designing a mounting interface that fit cleanly on the existing body as a bolt on customer part.
Pressure Sensor System
A pressure sensor and wire harness system built to help validate the aerodynamic performance of a MoTeC aero kit, capturing pressure data across the car to map airflow and characterize downforce. I worked on the system end to end: selecting the pressure sensors and their placement, designing and building the wire harness that connected them, and setting up the MoTeC data acquisition side that logged the readings.
The system was tested on track at Laguna Seca under live driving conditions, where it logged clean pressure data that could be used to evaluate the aero kit's performance. Getting reliable data in that environment meant the harness and sensors had to hold up to vibration, heat, and the electrical noise of a running race car.