CONCORD, N.C. -- On Wednesday, FOX Sports highlighted a keystone member of Hendrick Motorsports' engineering team for "Women on Wheels," a segment featuring the women making a difference in motor sports.
Amanda Cutright, a mechanical engineer and technical software developer at Hendrick Motorsports, knew she wanted to go into engineering from an early age.
“I enjoyed learning how things worked, I enjoyed physics and math,” Cutright said. “My dad was working on a weekend project and I was right there with him, asking questions. I wanted to help, I wanted to be there, and I realized I had a passion for it.”
Getting to her role was no easy task. Cutright made sacrifices since she her first year of college to earn experience with her engineering degree.
“Every summer I made sure I had a job or internship in the engineering industry,” Cutright said. “Even as a freshman, when you’re looking (into), ‘Do I wait tables this summer and live at the beach and have a great time?’ I ended up working at a shipyard.
“That gained me experience to where the next summer General Motors was recruiting, and I applied for that internship and I got that and moved to Michigan. It was the ultimate dream from when I first started really thinking about my career as working for an elite NASCAR team.”
In her current role, Cutright is helping a team of engineers break down the data collected from the Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 1LEs to help gain insightful information to make more calculated decisions during the race.
“Here at Hendrick Motorsports, we have some very specific problems that need solving,” Cutright said. “A lot of it is with data now. It’s part of my responsibility to make sure that the data feed from S&T that comes in with the telemetry, that we capture that and how we process that data to give the race engineers to give insights to decisions during the race.”
Her work at Hendrick Motorsports hasn’t gone unnoticed, getting recognition from general manager Jeff Andrews and NASCAR Hall of Famer Jeff Gordon. Cutright has established herself as an incredibly resourceful part of her mostly male team. She doesn’t do it for the kudos; she does it because it is her passion.
“Well, it’s always something you want to hear, it makes you feel good,” Cutright said. “But that’s not why I do it. I genuinely enjoy it. I like it.”