Sam Bird (born 9 January 1987 in Roehampton) is a British racing driver; he was educated at Millfield School in Somerset.

Bird made his name in single seater racing in the Formula BMW category, coming fourteenth overall in his debut season and second in the rookie cup. He came runner up in 2005, which was only his second season in the category and also came fourth in the Formula BMW world final, the race itself was won by German Marco Holzer.

For 2006, Bird entered the British Formula Renault series, where he won four races and came fourth in the championship, 111 points behind series champion Sebastian Hohenthal.

In 2007, Bird raced in the British Formula Three Championship with Carlin Motorsport, racing in a Mercedes powered Dallara. In March 2007, Bird secured sponsorship from BP, "The brand is already prominent in the World Rally Championship" Mark Reader, BP's UK Fuels Marketing Manager, commented, "Sam’s an incredible prospect and we’re excited to be getting into a relationship at this stage of his career" he added. Bird was elected to the Motor Sports Association Race Elite Scheme in April 2007, along with 5 other drivers in various British series and also participated in a series of aerodynamic tests with the AT&T Williams F1 Team.

A race engineer is a motorsport team member whose role is to communicate with the data analyst as well as the mechanics to determine the changes to be made to the vehicle. Off the race track, the race engineer analyzes historical data to determine the initial set up for the next race event. The race engineer function includes hands-on management of the vehicle mechanics, organizing testing schedule, as well as studying the regulations. The race engineer seeks to make all these activities occur as seamlessly as possible for their driver.

In addition, the vehicle set-up must stay within the regulations for the race event. The primary goal of the race engineer is to achieve the best performance from the vehicle and from the driver at the race track.

A good race engineer must have good interpersonal relationship skills. To be effective, the race engineer must have a good working relationship with not only his driver, but also the rest of the team, both at and away from the track. Many times the race engineer is also "the face" of the team for the media; this is especially true during the race while the driver is inaccessible. This makes the race engineers media skills a priority.