Each year, engineers are selected to work as members of one of the teams competing at the highest levels of motorsport. Following their involvement in racing, the engineers bring back their experiences and new skills to one of Ford's production vehicle programs.

Ford regards the racing assignments as a training ground for ambitious engineers as well as a proving ground for methods of development. "In racing, they see immediate results," says Neil Ressler, former Ford chief technical officer. "When they come back after two years, they are very impatient."

Jay O'Connell is Ford Special Vehicle Team chief engineer and he has a background in the racing program. He worked on Lincoln LS vehicle dynamics development, served as manager for Ford's Champ Car racing program and has raced IMSA GTU cars at Daytona.

His racing experience started with the Formula SAE program while he was in Cornell University's engineering school. As a senior, his participation helped the school win the 1988 competition. After starting with Ford's Specialty Car Development program that fall, Jay was not shy about sharing ideas on lightening the Thunderbird's rear suspension.

"Come on, you're just an FCG (Ford College Graduate). What do you know about this stuff," O'Connell says he was asked. "I told them I've done this for Formula SAE and I know how to design it. So, they finally gave me a budget and a car. I designed it, built it and we saved thirty-five pounds in the rear suspension."

That project opened the door for a rotation at Special Vehicle Operations. "It was a good introduction to Michael Kranefuss, Lee Morse, Mose Noland and a lot of the guys who are still there at Ford Racing," says Jay. After this stint at SVO, he moved to Vehicle Development, working on the Lincoln Mark VIII. After a successful rollout of the Mark, he was transferred to Advanced Vehicle Development.

His team's assignment was to build an "SHO wagon" concept vehicle. The Taurus wagon, equipped with an SHO engine and suspension, was featured on the April '93 cover of Car & Driver magazine. "They gave the SHO wagon to Paul Newman after they did the one-Lap of America," recalls O'Connell. "He liked the car so much, a year later he bought the car from Ford and used it as his daily driver for a couple of years."

In 1993, Jay transferred to the Lincoln LS development program. His past racing experience served well, including the areas of weight distribution, suspension tuning and aerodynamics. In the summer of 1998, Jay became Ford Racing's CART program manager. It "... was a great way to take my background in college and interest in racing and tie it into my day job," he says. "We were going after improvements in refuelling that could give the Ford teams a half-second advantage on the pit stops, which could be significant on a twelve-second pit stop."

In the fall of 2000, Bobby Rahal was appointed by Ford to head up the Jaguar Racing Formula 1 team. According to Jay, "Bobby asked if I would be interested in going over there and be a liason between the engineers in Dearborn and the team in England. I moved over in late Spring 2001. My role was Research and Development manager. We were losing one to two seconds per lap, so I dove into trying to unravel the problem." The following year, Ford reduced its Formula 1 involvement and Jay returned to Dearborn.

Later that year, O'Connell took a sabbatical and went to work for Multimatic Motorsports near Toronto, Canada. He worked to help develop the Grand-Am Ford Focus Daytona Prototype vehicle, which competed and won its class in the 24 Hours of Daytona in 2003. Following that success, Ford awarded Multimatic the task of developing the FR500C Competition Mustang. Jay was a key player in developing chassis and suspension upgrades for the series-dominating car.

Jay has since returned to Dearborn as Chief Engineer for Ford's Special Vehicle Team (SVT). His recent projects have included the SVT Shelby Mustang GT500 and the Ford Adrenalin sport utility truck concept vehicle.