Leena Gade: Engineering the Greats at Le Mans | Podcast

As trailblazers go in motor sport, there aren't many that can match up with the groundbreaking achievements of Leena Gade, who joins Rob Widdows for our Engineering the Greats podcast series, produced in association with Scalextric.
On her Le Mans debut with Audi in 2011 Gade became the first female race engineer to win at La Sarthe. She She would mastermind wins again in 2012 and 2014, sealing her place as one of Le Mans' engineering greats, before working in GT racing, IndyCar and now Extreme E.
In the latest instalment of our podcast series, Gade opens up on what it was like to be in the centre of the Audi winning machine.

[@greatscot04]

Being an Audi fan going back to the 2000's, I have all the time for Leena. She always come off as being knowledgeable, yet humble enough to admit she doesn't know everything.

[@SmallBlogV8]

I'm only halfway through so far but she's already said so much interesting stuff about how the engineer can work with the drivers and how it worked inside Audi Sport (sounds similar to how I've heard the Mercedes F1 team described before, with a pragmatic but no-blame-culture approach that's about enabling people better). This is great.

[@_Ben4810]

So no-one is to blame for 3 seasons of no wins at Mercedes F1 then...??? Very pragmatic indeed..... Meanwhile over at Red Bull Racing & their ''it's your job, get on with it now...!'' working culture.....

[@benzina5917]

Leena is an incredibly bright and hard working person. Really looking forward to listening to this with proper time.

[@paulreilly3904]

So glad to find this. She's a fantastic engineer and comes across as a lovely person. And I've no doubt will give fascinating insight into Audi and her 3 drivers.

[@SachiGortchi]

Super teamplayer !

[@rajenderchopra767]

KBC 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉 QUESTION 7 CRORES

[@paulreilly3904]

Very interesting, but I wish she'd spoken more about Le mans and the drivers and other personnel at Audi.

[@satinder2486]

One way of being involved in the sport without driving

[@alexrebmann1253]

I wish that thinks could have been better for her in Indycars.