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The German last weekend became the first full-time female race engineer to achieve a pole position in the Repco Supercars Championship, when James Golding prevailed in the Saturday Top 10 Shootout at Hidden Valley.
Mayer has now opened up on her 14-year career to date to mark today’s International Women in Engineering Day.
“I would say as a female engineer working in a male-dominated industry, you are always standing out,” she said.
“If you do something very well, you will be in the spotlight, but if something goes wrong, you will also be in the spotlight.
“So, the challenge as a female engineer is that you have to be better than average, and make sure that you are always on top of everything.
“You must always make sure you are on top of everything and not be an ‘everyday engineer’ just trucking along.
“You have to be able to play with the top players and show that you know what you are doing and that you are confident in your work.
“What I am seeing changing is that we are building an amazing community, especially in Australia but not only here, of women working in motorsports who are connecting via social media, and we all support each other, so there are lots of ways we can share our experiences and also opportunities coming up and that community is helping make us stronger and helping us to grow and I think that is really great.”
Mayer arrived at PremiAir midway through last year with the intention that she work as a data engineer on Tim Slade’s #23 Camaro, although she quickly took up race engineer duties in an interim capacity.
Prior to that, she spent several years at Triple Eight Race Engineering, working on its Supercars and also taking a major role in its GT programmes.
While she was on Jamie Whincup’s car for his thrilling 2017 championship victory on the streets of Newcastle, it is now the pole with Golding – PremiAir’s first ever – which she rates as the peak of her career to date.
“The Darwin weekend’s results are definitely the highlight of my Supercars career so far, there is no question,” declared Mayer.
“We have all been working so hard and to have this breakthrough of our first pole position and Jimmy’s first pole position, both on Friday with the provisional pole and then backed up with being number one in the Top 10 Shootout, was extremely exciting for the entire team.
“It is definitely an achievement of which I am very proud for myself, for Jimmy, and PremiAir Nulon Racing.
“Before Darwin, I would have recounted two other moments as being my most memorable.
“The first was when I was with Triple Eight and we won the 2017 championship with Jamie Whincup – I was the performance engineer on that car and not only did we win it in the last race of the season, we won it on the last lap, so there was a lot of emotions, especially as we had come close for a couple of years before that.
“The second was when in 2022 I was race engineering for the first time with the Supercheap Auto Wildcard entry with Craig Lowndes and Declan Fraser at the Bathurst 1000, and it was the best wildcard result at Bathurst ever achieved [eighth] – it was amazing to have my first Bathurst as a race engineer and also to have this amazing result.”
Mayer followed in the footsteps of her father, who worked for a CNC manufacturer, with an internship at Mercedes inspiring her to study automotive engineering.
She was set on a path to motorsport specifically while part of her university’s Formula SAE team, and then worked in DTM before moving to Australia to start with Triple Eight in 2016.
Her advice for those seeking a start in the industry is, “to show up and go out there and go after what you want.
“A lot of people want to work in motorsport, especially with it becoming so popular with Drive to Survive and so on, but you need to not only want it, but also show that you want it,” continued Mayer.
“This means taking initiative, accepting volunteering work, and going out there and seeing what it is actually like, because sometimes what you see on TV is a bit different to what it is in real life.
“Also don’t be afraid to connect with other women and also men that work in the industry and get advice, get contacts and network, and take those first steps forward.”
