The most visible person in a Formula One team is the driver, the man who receives most of the glory for a victory or the blame for a failure. So it is no surprise that it is his career path that attracts most public attention.

Tales of teams nurturing future drivers from a young age are now typified by the careers of the Briton Lewis Hamilton, who is second in the drivers’ standings heading into the Hungarian Grand Prix in Budapest this weekend, and the German Sebastian Vettel, the reigning world champion.

But out of the spotlight, the multitude of engineers who provide the driver with a racing car are now also being nurtured by teams as they develop programs similar to the young-driver programs to come up with the best technical minds of the future.

In the past, as recently as the 1980s and ’90s, most of the top Formula One car designers came from backgrounds unrelated to car design or engineering. At the time, it was still possible for one designer to conceive of and build the whole car.