About Formula Student
About Formula Student
What is Formula Student?
Formula Student in an engineering challenge, run by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) together with several well known companies from the industry. The challenge is for students to "design, build, develop, market and compete as a team with a small single seater racing car". Students are given the opportunity to tackle challenges relating to the design, manufacture and business side of running a racing team. This teaches the students the reality of working as a team, under pressure and meeting strict deadlines.
Students are asked to assume that they are producing a prototype car to a manufacturing firm for evaluation. The car is intended to be sold to the non professional weekend autocross market, so must have high performance, in terms of acceleration, braking and cornering capabilites. The car should also have a low cost, be easily maintainable and reliable. A high degree of marketability is expected, by pleasing aesthetics, comfort and the use of common parts. Expected production is assumed to be 1000 cars per year, at a cost of below £16,000 per car.
Who is involved in Formula Student?
Formula student is a competition run by the Institute of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE), which is open to engineering students from universities all over the world. Entrants come from the UK, Europe and as far away as the Americas, Asia and Australasia. Formula Student is seen as a great extracurricular activity for students as it promotes careers and excellence in engineering by challenging university students to design, build, develop, market and compete as a team with a small single seater racing car.
Local industries are also indirectly involved in the competition as many teams gain sponsorship for their car and use local distributor’s parts in their design.
The automotive and motorsport industries in particular, and many other high technology engineering companies, know just how important the continuing supply of high quality engineers is to their success. For them, involvement in Formula Student helps them maintain and develop that supply. At a time when many university engineering courses have difficulty filling their places, Formula Student uses the excitement and appeal of motorsport to open young minds to the world of possibilities that a career in engineering involves, and gives them a wealth of real experience to prepare them for success in that career.
Many high profile individuals have expressed interest in, or been involved in formula student, for example Gary Savage, Operations Director, Honda Racing F1 Team was quoted as saying:
"As a team and a company we love to race and we love to compete, and that is why we we’re at Formula Student. For Honda, there is also an ulterior motive. We are always looking for the next generation of young engineers and young designers and in fact, 20 of our best young engineers have all been involved in FS."
Ross Brawn, who is now with Brawn GP, has attended the event and has spoken of his interest in the event due to "the variety of breadth of talent"
What are the Rules?
Students are asked to assume that they are producing a prototype car to a manufacturing firm for evaluation. The car is intended to be sold to the non professional weekend autocross market, so must have high performance, in terms of acceleration, braking and cornering capabilites. The car should also have a low cost, be easily maintainable and reliable. A high degree of marketability is expected, by pleasing aesthetics, comfort and the use of common parts. Expected production is assumed to be 1000 cars per year, at a cost of below £16,000 per car.
Formula Student teams can enter a car into any one of 5 classes for the competition. These are Class 3, for cars which have being designed, but not yet built, allowing the students to get valuable feedback on the design, Class 2, for cars which are almost ready for competition in Class 1, but don't take part in the Dynamic Events, Class 1-200, which is where a car from the previous year is entered again, after modifications have taken place to improve performance, Class 1-a is for alternative fueled and sustainably built cars into Formula Student and Class 1 is where cars are designed, manufactured and built for the sole purpose of competing in the event.
The Event
The time, effort and hard work the Formula Student teams put into the creation of their cars come to fruition when the competitions take place all over the world. Cardiff Racing primarily competes in the UK, and the 2010 event is going to be held at Silverstone from the 15th to the 18th July, just a week after the Formula 1 British Grand Prix. During this time the cars will be tested to their limits in order for the judges to determine the best overall car.
The challenges the cars must overcome consist of static and dynamic events. In the static events, the cars will be judged on Design, Cost and Presentation as well as technical and safety scrutineering, tilt tests, brake tests and noise tests. The dynamic events consist of a figure of eight skidpan trial, acceleration and sprint events, and finally the endurance. The scores on each of the tests are then collated and the teams ranked according to their scores. There are a number of different awards to be won at the event ranging from best overall car, best newcomer, and most sustainable.