A group of students from the University recently took part in the world’s largest student Engineering competition, the Formula Student challenge.

The challenge was to oversee the production of a racing car through the fundraising, design and build stages to compete in a race around the famous Silverstone racing circuit. The competition, organised by the Institute of Mechanical Engineers, is the biggest and most prestigious of its kind in the world and attracts 125 teams from universities as far away as the United States, Australia, Nigeria, Thailand and Russia.

The team from Glasgow, UGRacing, was coordinated by 3rd year PhD student Ed Pratt and comprised 25 undergraduate and postgraduate students. Ed and his team were tasked with producing a prototype car for evaluation by industry professionals, this included the enormously complex task of overseeing all aspects of the design and build for each individual component in the car.Formula Student team 300 

“The aim of the project is to give mechanical engineering students a taste of what it’s like to be involved with an engineering project from conception to completion.” says Ed. “Formula Student is a great way to test out the theoretical skills that you learn on the course, that otherwise you perhaps don’t get a chance to use.”

However, the technical skills are only one element of the Formula Student challenge; each team is also marked by judges on their business model which includes their plans for the management and marketing of the project. This is no small task in itself as the recommended minimum for building and testing a racing prototype is £25,000; the majority of this comes through fundraising and it all needs to be in place before building can even start on the car itself.

“This is the really tough part – we need people who can manage a project. Technical skills are not the only things that you need to have in your team to do well in Formula Student. You also need business managers, people for the costing, alongside people who can present to sponsors and win funding. Because of this we are always looking, not only for engineers, but for anyone with a background or an interest in these areas who might also benefit the team, there is probably a role for anyone somewhere in the FS team.”

“The Formula Student experience is also very highly respected within the industry. Because it’s such a large and prestigious competition, employers have all heard of it and they know that someone who has worked in Formula Student will have skills that you can’t easily acquire anywhere else.”

Although the Glasgow team didn’t qualify to race at the end of the day, the car was rated highly in the static elements of the competition, including the design, costing and marketing side of the project.

This year the team are already working hard to ensure they make the most of what was learned at the competition. The plan is to construct a whole new car from scratch to allow the previous vehicle to be used as a test bed throughout the season. The team ask that if anyone would like to get involved or feel that they could help in any way, be it funding, manufacturing, advice or any other support, please get in touch, they would love to hear from you!

First published: 29 September 2011

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