Australia’s Luke Mason is Josef Newgarden’s race engineer on the #2 car, while New Zealand’s Malcolm Finch is the race engineer on the #3 for Scott McLaughlin.

The IndyCar paddock features several Australian engineers, including Matt Sanderson at McLaren, Peter Craik at Ed Carpenter Racing, and D’Arcy Wade, who this year made the move from Supercars with Dick Johnson Racing to Juncos Hollinger Racing.

Mason made the move after several years as a data engineer in Supercars, working with Ford team Stone Brothers Racing and then Erebus Motorsport on its Mercedes-AMG E63 program.

“I decided that it was the right time, I was 25 and there was the whole world out there,” Mason told Speedcafe.

“And in the worst case, if it all turns to shit, I’ll come home and figure it out.”

Mason looked at North America and Europe and decided on the former, inspired by NASCAR race-winning engineer James Small who was a product of Tickford Racing.

Mason worked at Richard Childress Racing in the NASCAR Cup Series for several years.

“I gave that a go for a couple of years and that was an eye-opening experience in itself,” Mason explained.

“It’s unbelievable the amount of resources there are for a car turning left, that looks like a brick. The amount of engineering and science that goes into those things to make them competitive was pretty eye-opening.

“That was a really good experience to be exposed to that and just exposed to how you go racing in America. It’s very different to what Australia is.”

Mason said he always wanted to work in the IndyCar Series, and leaned on contacts he had made in the United States to land a job at Carlin. He was there for four years before joining Team Penske.

“I ended up at Carlin for four years, which was sometimes very good and sometimes very tough,” said Mason.

“You’re thrust into an environment where it’s sink or swim. You have to rely on yourself in a small group of smart people to drive the team forward and on occasions we did that.

“You take all those learnings and everything that you’ve built up over your career there to maybe be fortunate enough to have the door open to come to Team Penske.

“At that point, you’re ready, and it’s not until you step in the door and meet the people who made that company and organisation who it is, you understand how and why.

“Now to be to be a part of that and to have success at Team Penske, whether it’s Will’s championship the first year I was there, and then moving on to Josef’s two 500s, it’s a very special place to be and you don’t take it for granted every day when you walk into work that you’re surrounded by successful people.”

Before becoming an engineer, Malcolm Finch was a driver.

He won New Zealand’s prestigious SpeedSport Scholarship, which was awarded to the likes of Formula 1 star Liam Lawson, Supercars champion turned NASCAR ace Shane van Gisbergen, Bathurst 1000 winner Richie Stanaway, as well as Super Formula and Super GT champion Nick Cassidy.

Finch won the scholarship in 2011 and went on to race in V8 touring cars before turning his attention to engineering. He worked for Lyall Williamson’s International Motorsport in Auckland before making the leap to North Carolina.

“I came to the decision basically when I left university, I wanted to be in racing anywhere in the world and so it was just applying everywhere – Formula 1, IndyCar, sports cars, and ended up getting an opportunity in sports cars in Florida doing IMSA,” Finch told Speedcafe.

Finch quickly graduated to IndyCar, joining Team Penske alongside Simon Pagenaud in 2019 as his data engineer. When the team shuttered its IMSA program and added a fourth car to its ranks for Scott McLaughlin, Finch joined his countryman.

The well-documented triple sacking at Team Penske meant Finch stepped up to be McLaughlin’s race engineer midway through the 2025 season.

Finch said there is a lot of appeal for IndyCar, even as a series that uses a single-supply chassis from Dallara and two engines from Honda and Chevy.

“I absolutely love the fact that you can go out and you’re not racing any sort of rulebook, like you are just literally going to win every race,” said Finch.

“That’s the purest form of racing that you can get. But, having said that, we have a team, you’re at the top of the engineering realm where you have all these resources to be able to pretty much do whatever you want.

“Maybe Formula 1 is a little bit more technically involved, just because we’re a spec series and we have a lot of parts, we can’t just build a new front wing. Having said that, we do everything to test the spec front wing to make sure we’re optimising it.”

Finch is one of two high-profile New Zealanders in the IndyCar paddock. The other is Blair Julian, Chip Ganassi Racing’s team manager.

Julian has been a staple of the IndyCar paddock for more than two decades while Finch is coming up to his seventh year Stateside.

He said the move across is worth the price of admission for anyone willing to forge a career.

“I feel like it’s fairly accessible to a lot of people. Obviously, there are visa restrictions and stuff like that, but a lot of teams sponsor that,” Finch explained.

“It’s pretty easy for people to get started. Once you’re over here, it’s easy to stay – just because you’re able to make a name for yourself.

“I see the same guys, week in week out. Everyone knows everyone kind of thing and if you end up moving teams or whatever and growing, then you’re highly sought after.

“I feel like it’s definitely not unattainable for people. When I was living in New Zealand, I used to think, ‘Man, that’s so far away’, but now that I’m here, it’s really not.

“So long as you’re really good at what you do and you’re kind of switched on, it’s really easy, and I think that’s why so many Kiwis and Aussies come over here and stay.

“People love their work ethic, which is something that I talked to Steve Horne about a long time ago. It’s harder to find here, the work ethic that you get from Down Under, you’re working on smaller teams all the time and you just have to be multi-job oriented.

“You can’t really just do one thing the whole time, and I think that breeds a group of smart individuals who are really able to excel.

“You kind of sit there in New Zealand and you think about all of the things that other people are doing and you’re like, ‘Hey, let’s try that over here’ and you kind of implement that on a GT3 car of some sort, but it’s then eventually you get the taste of wanting to go overseas.

“You can’t help but miss New Zealand, though. I’m not gonna lie.”

Like Finch, Mason encouraged anyone thinking about making the move to take a serious look.

“You’ve got to do it. The reality is, if you are committed and passionate about wanting to work in racing, you’re gonna find a way,” he said.

“You can’t tiptoe or be tentative about wanting to do it, and the reality is you have to be good at what you do because we are a performance-based industry. If you’re not good enough, you’re gonna get pushed aside and someone else will do your job for you.

“If you have the passion, you have the work ethic and you have the drive to want to succeed and be in racing, then I say do everything you can, whether it’s Europe, whether it’s America, Talk to people.

“I laugh now, but you get people who email me or on LinkedIn getting messages, young Aussie engineers or mechanics who want to jump across. At times, it gets annoying because you’ve got a job to do. At the same time, I was the same young guy doing the same thing to people when I got into contact as well.

“You respect the fact that people are trying to find a way to forge a career. I’ve got a lot of time for people who are willing to move their whole life to seek an opportunity overseas and you know I would highly encourage it.”