Five university engineering students have been given the career opportunity of a lifetime in Formula One, as Infiniti announces them as the winners of the 2015 Infiniti Performance Engineering Academy.

Muhammad Zafar (20, Saudi Arabia), Andre Plakhotnichenko (25, Russia), Daniel Sanham (24, UK), Zhang Zitong (22, China) and Alex Allmandinger (22, US) were chosen from a global selection process, with each now set to receive a 12-month work placement split between Infiniti Red Bull Racing and Infiniti, both in the UK, complete with full salary.

The winners will move to England in mid-September to work across a variety of roles spanning vehicle dynamics, vehicle design, aerodynamics and electronics, spending eight months at the Infiniti Red Bull Racing factory and four months at Infiniti’s European Technical Centre working on road car development projects. With F1 technology more relevant to the automotive industry than ever, they will play a key role in the ongoing transfer of technical knowledge and expertise between the race team and Infiniti.

Now in its second year, this year’s academy saw thousands of top level engineering students enter the programme.

After a series of intense interviews with the best entrants, 10 finalists in each region (Europe, US, Saudi Arabia, Russia and China) were selected to attend a regional final event where they were put through their paces in a structured assessment day by a panel of judges from Infiniti and Infiniti Red Bull Racing. Of these 10, one winner per region was selected for the main prize.