Delphine Biscaye

Biscaye was raised in a small village in France.[1] She is one of three children in her family and has two brothers.[2] Biscaye came from a background where none of her family were neither involved nor interested in motor racing. She got interested in the industry through watching Formula One and rallying.[3] During an interview with the lecturers of the Clermont-Ferrand-based mechanical engineering school French Institute of Advanced Mechanics (now SIGMA Clemont) in 2005,[3][4][5] she was told a job in motor sport was not feasible since other interviewees had the same ambition and jobs in the industry were scarce.[1][3] Biscaye said of the setback in a 2018 interview, "Looking back, I think that's what made me more determined – because it was more difficult, I had a greater desire to succeed, so I worked very hard to prove that I could do it."[1]

Nevertheless, she contacted several teams who competed in Formula One and the Le Mans Series. Biscaye later stopped her search when the Williams Grand Prix Engineering Formula One team agreed to employ her.[3] She worked for the team for half a year in 2008 and returned for another four months in February 2009 after graduating from the French Institute of Advanced Mechanics with a degree in mechanical engineering. Williams later employed her as a contractor on a contractual basis until the end of the year.[4][6] During her time at Williams, Biscaye worked in the team's design office to help develop its kinetic energy recovery system technology in their research and development department and then focused on the suspension for the FW31 chassis.[3][6] She also had a placement at University of Canterbury as a post-doctorate assistant where she designed and tested a new rapid prototype system.[5] Biscaye travelled back to France after she could not get Williams to employ her on a permanent basis when her contract ended and sought alternative work.[1][3]

Biscaye was employed by Venturi Automobiles in December 2009 as a research and development engineer and a computer aided designer on the company's sports car prototype programme.[3][6] In her first years at Venturi, she also took a course in Sociology at the University of Strasbourg.[4] In early 2011, Biscaye was made project manager of the fully-electric four-wheel drive Buckeye Bullet (VBB 3) vehicle. It is a joint programme established by Venturi with students of Ohio State University intended to establish new land speed records at the Bonneville Speedway in the U.S. state of Utah.[3][7] From July 2012 until 2016, she was assigned to work in the Antarctica programme as a designer, an electric vehicle intended to provide scientists access to research zones considered to be un-reachable with internal combustion machinery.[4][7]