Articles
This article appeared in Professional Engineering, Issue 5 2021.
Sheffield Formula Racing won overall, only the second British team to win the competition, following Cardiff’s success in 2017. Following a virtual event in 2020, this year’s live event was open to cars designed both this year and last year, owing to the difficulty of accessing workshops during lockdown.
“We didn’t think, at the start of this year, that there was going to be a competition,” said Oliver Hutchinson, president of Edinburgh University Formula Student, speaking ahead of the weekend’s dynamic events.
The last testing session before the competition revealed that the car’s engine was knocking, forcing the team to take swift and decisive action – a newly-bought motorcycle sat at the back of the team’s garage, stripped of its engine.
“Covid has affected everything,” said Hutchinson. “If we were able to test, we would have found this issue earlier.”
Edinburgh also had an FS-AI team, which won ADS Class Overall and ADS Class Overall Static Events. Previous years only had one specially built driverless IMechE car, which students loaded autonomous programs onto, but this year saw an additional IMechE vehicle and some student-built vehicles.
Electric mobility is another field set to grow in the years to come, with early adopters such as Warwick University hoping for an advantage. “There’s only about six electric teams, and not many have got as far as we have,” said first-year student Shruti Cotra. “Most of the combustion-car teams are planning to switch to electric – obviously, as that’s the future. So it’s nice that we’re ahead of the curve.”
Racing ahead
The competition’s role as both STEM outreach programme and a route to a successful career for young engineers is more important than ever amid the disruption of Covid-19. Swansea University Race Engineering is particularly focused on that, said team principal Adrian McNea. The team takes part in open days, and the university’s 2014 car was turned into a simulator, currently part of a public exhibition promoting engineering.
“We try and do as much as we can, advertising the team and getting more people involved in future generations,” he said.
After an undergraduate placement with a well-regarded automotive company, he now has a graduate job lined up. “In my interview, all I talked about was Formula Student – how I actually applied real knowledge to a real subject, and a real project.”
He added: “Formula Student gave me a chance to apply stuff that you might not in actual lectures, because in lectures you’re not getting hands-on. This gives you real experience.”
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Content published by Professional Engineering does not necessarily represent the views of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.