Indy 500 engineer Lizzie Todd on how she got into the sport, the most stressful part of her job, and more

Lizzie Todd went to her first Indianapolis 500 when she was just eight years old.

Almost immediately, she was hooked.

“So, when I was 8, I went to my first Indy 500, and I saw a car go from 60 to 220 in three seconds and just absolutely fell in love with everything,” said Todd when we spoke earlier this week.

The race has been a part of her life ever since, but on Sunday, she and her team will be trying to win the Indianapolis 500 itself. Todd is a Systems Engineer at Arrow McLaren, working in that role on Pato O’Ward’s No. 5 car, and we spoke ahead of the 109th edition of the greatest spectacle in racing about her motorsport journey, this year’s Indianapolis 500, and more.

As you might expect, Todd’s reaction to seeing her first Indianapolis 500, beyond falling in love with the sport, was to map out a path of her own on the track.

Her father, however, had different ideas.

“The next year, I asked for a go-kart, and my dad said no,” said Todd.

She then thought that rather than being behind the wheel of the cars, she could be working on them.

Again, that idea was shot down.

“I was pointing out the people jumping over the wall doing pit stops, and I was like, ‘I want to do that.’ And my dad was like, ‘[N]o, you’re gonna die if you do that.’”

However, her father had another idea, one that set Todd on a path to the world of IndyCar and a chance to win that very race this weekend.

“So he pointed the people with the computers and he was like, ‘[Y]ou want to do that,’” added Todd.

The “people with the computers” were the race engineers, putting in the work off the track to help those on it excel on race day, and throughout the year.

After some research, Todd was on her way.

“From there [I] started Googling, ‘motor sports engineering,’ ‘automotive engineering,’ stuff like that, and the Purdue University motorsports engineering program popped up. I found out they had an all-girls summer camp for engineering, so I went to that through high school, and then did that program in college,” explained Todd.

Todd attended Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), graduating with a Bachelor of Science in Motorsport Engineering. But beyond what she was learning in the classroom, Todd was starting to experience the real world of motorsport, thanks to three critical internships that put her on the path to Arrow McLaren.

“I got three internships while I was there,” explained Todd. “So I worked for IndyCar my freshman year. It wasn’t engineering-focused; I did tech inspection. So I learned a lot about the base builds of the car, but the biggest thing that internship did for me was networking. My crew chief, who I work with now, I met during that internship. A lot of the crew guys in the paddock, I know them because of that internship.

“So that was mega and just getting my face out into the paddock.

“The next year, I worked at Juncos Racing, just as a junior systems engineer, kind of got my feet wet into the role I do now.

“And then my final year, my senior year, I actually worked at Team Penske, [and] moved down to North Carolina just as a generic rotational engineering internship,” added Todd.

That internship with Team Penske ended just as Roger Penske purchased the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, which closed off the chance to work with the team after graduation. But Todd caught on with another IndyCar team for three seasons in a systems engineering role, before another door opened.

The door to Arrow McLaren.

During the 2022 season Kate Gundlach, whom Todd met during her IndyCar internship, approached Todd about a systems engineering role at Arrow McLaren. The two sides stayed in contact throughout that season, and eventually, Todd made the move to Arrow McLaren.

“This is my third season now with Arrow McLaren on the number 5 with Pato, and I love it.

“I love the people here.”

In her role as the Systems Engineer for O’Ward and the No. 5 car, Todd has lots of responsibilities.

Starting with anything on the car itself that has a wire.

“So I am responsible for anything that has a wire,” began Todd when I asked her about her position at Arrow McLaren. “So all the electronics, radios, telemetry. Anything that has a wire is mine.”

However, the job goes far beyond that.

“I’m responsible for calibrations. I’m responsible for system vitals, making sure the car is basically as accurate as possible, so my race engineer and performance engineer have the best data possible, [and[ so Pato can do his best job,” continued Todd. “My role is making sure the car is as healthy and as accurate as possible.”

But her biggest job, particularly on race day?

Calculating fuel mileage.

“Then my biggest role during the race is calculating fuel mileage, so I know at any given time about down to a teaspoon how much fuel is in the car,” added Todd.

It is this part of the job that is the most stressful, and with good reason. Running out of fuel is a nightmare scenario at any race, but in particular at the Indianapolis 500, where legends are made. Back during the 1999 Indianapolis 500 race leader Robby Gordon was coming out of Turn 4 to take the white flag for the final lap, but his car began to sputter. He had run out of fuel, and Kenny Brack passed him to take the checkered flag.

Scott Dixon was the pole-sitter for the 2021 Indianapolis 500, but he ran out of gas before his first pit stop and finished 17th.

You can see why this part of the job would be stressful.

“Definitely fuel,” said Todd when I asked her what the most stressful part of her job is.

“We only know if the fuel tank is empty until the last gallon. We can fill in 18.3 gallons with the redhead, which is our big fuel hose, so we can do 18.3 gallons in six seconds. And then you don’t know, really, what you’re burning.

“There’s a fuel flow meter, which is calculating how much fuel is going to the engine, but it’s, you know, it’s just a calculator,” added Todd. “So it could be wrong.”

And as we outlined above, being wrong can be very costly.

“We’re tuning our fuel error in all month long, to get it right, but you might have swings in fuel error, so you might run out quicker than you thought,” Todd said. “But you don’t know until that last gallon where you are, so that is the most stressful.”

Complicating matters is just how hard it is to get an accurate reading at the Indianapolis 500, where there are so many other factors at work.

“Indy is a little different than a road course, because it’s really hard for the drivers to hit specific fuel numbers at Indy,” described Todd. “If you’re leading, you’re burning more fuel than if you’re in the pack. So there’s a lot of different factors at Indy that are gonna affect your fuel numbers.”

What can help is working together as a team, and sharing data among the teams and drivers.

“That’s why we work really hard together.

“In the race last year, you saw Alex [Rossi] and Pato trading the lead to get both cars as far as they could,” described Todd. “So all of that is stuff I’m thinking about on race day, and very difficult.

“And if the driver’s not making his fuel number, it makes my life way harder.”

What also makes her job tough is her determination to get it right, so O’Ward has the best chance possible to take the checkered flag in P1.

“I am always gonna give my absolute most, so Pato has the best car possible,” added Todd. “I don’t ever want to get in his way from doing his job because he is so good at what he does, that if he’s worrying about what I’m doing, then I’m not doing my job right.

“There’s always that, like, little bit of consciousness in the back of you, you have to get this right because so many other people are depending on you to get it right.”

Before I spoke with Todd, I asked readers on social media if they had any questions they wanted me to ask her.

There were more than I could get to.

The first was a rather technical one, centered on the operating system present in the steering wheel on the IndyCars themselves.

“So it’s a Cosworth-based system,” described Todd. “There’s three boxes in the car that control the entire car. There’s the CLU, which is the central logging unit, there’s the IPS, which is the intelligent power system, it’s like the circuit breaker, so the CLU is the main logging unit, main computer, and there’s the circuit breaker, and then there’s the CCW (Cosworth Carbon Wheel) MK3, which is the steering wheel itself.

“That is completely custom built by Cosworth, and then we use their software tool set toolbox, to create our data files and look at data.”

The next question involved the sensors that are present on the car itself, giving back information to the teams throughout the race.

“Incredibly [complex],” described Todd. “There are some sensors like our wheel speeds, we’re getting data a thousand times a second.

“There’s roughly 150 sensors that I’m responsible for, and that’s not to be confused with the engine. I don’t do anything with the engine. That is completely our partners at Chevrolet. I don’t see a lot of that data that comes through.

“Mine is solely chassis-based. Chassis, gearbox, clutch [are] really like my three main systems,” continued Todd. “Our shifting system is an electronic shift. Our clutches are still master cylinder-based, but they’ve got electronic calibrations in them, so we calibrate in the bite point. When the clutch actually bites, and they can go.

“They are incredibly complex systems.”

These sensors actually provide the teams with almost more data than they can use during a race.

“Honestly, we produce more data than we can look at during the race,” outlined Todd. “You are really looking at what is critical at that time. We’ve got alarms set that are telling us, you know, the good, the bad, and the ugly of the car. Things that are gonna catch your eye quickly, if you need to stop.

“My personal motto is: ‘Keep it simple.’ During the race, I am looking at things that are gonna stop the car, because that’s really the most important.”

What does help is sharing information among the teams and the drivers. Todd outlined just how much data the teams share during a race session, and how that helps everyone be at their best.

“All of it,” said Todd when I asked how much information they share at Arrow McLaren.

“I can pull up Kyle [Larson]’s telemetry and watch it if I wanted to, compare it to what Pato’s doing, and they can do the same thing. All of that is open amongst our whole team.

“Nolan [Siegel] can pull up Pato’s data and see what he’s doing at any given time.”

This happens in the garage as well, when the drivers pull in to the garage and are handed data to examine.

“That’s a lot of what we’re doing during like Carb Day, when they come in and you see that tablet get handed to them. A lot of those are overlaid data streams between the other drivers.”

The teams also monitor what each driver is saying on the radio, so they have the most up-to-date input from the drivers on the track.

“We’re also tuning in to their comments, you know, what they’re saying about the car. Like, ‘[I]s the No. 7 car experiencing takeoff or under steer in Turn 2 as well, or is it just the No. 5?’

“And that really helps our decision making on what we’re gonna do to the car because it’s like, ‘[O]h if this also happened to the No. 7 and they did this change, let’s try that and see if it works for us as well.’

“We’ve got live team chats going all the time with different information,” added Todd. “So yeah, we’ve got a lot of brainpower that’s going to the whole team.”

As someone who went to her first Indianapolis 500 when she was just eight, and has already lived a life in IndyCar, Todd knows more than most just how special the Indianapolis 500 is.

“To me, the Indy 500 is Christmas Day. It is a giant celebration,” began Todd when I asked her about the importance of the race.

“The whole city comes together to celebrate this incredible event. It’s the greatest spectacle in racing, and it’s the largest single-day sporting event in the world.

What helps make this such a special event is how the excitement builds over the weeks leading up to the race itself.

“It is incredibly cool, especially after being here for two weeks, with the grandstands kind of empty, to see them fill in on race day. The whole place changes colors,” described Todd. “And like when we were qualifying on Sunday, listening to the crowd scream “Sweet Caroline,” like that was so cool.

”What makes it so special is that this one day means something different to everybody else who comes here.

“But we all come together to celebrate it.”

Something else that Todd hopes to celebrate?

A win.

Todd and the No. 5 team were so close a season ago, when O’Ward finished second.

“I mean, we were two corners away last year, and it absolutely destroyed me,” said Todd when I asked her what being a part of a team that won the Indianapolis 500 would mean.

“I have dreamed of winning the Indy 500 since I was 8,” added Todd. “It’d be everything I worked for.”

Can the No. 5 team win on Sunday?

“Absolutely,” replied Todd with a smile.

She’ll get a chance to make that dream a reality this Sunday.