Comprised of 7 Masters level technical Managers and 17-18 experienced team members from lower years, SHU Racing counts on a multitude of members from the campus to support the team and get the car ready. “Silverstone was great fun this year, as we brought over 40 of the team to join us” said Samuel Seabrooke EngTech, SHU Racing’s Team Principal for 2018/2019. And with the recent recruitment drive on campus this week, the team have the unenviable job of sorting through more than 150 submissions to join. “There’s always something to do aside from getting the car ready, like preparing food, logistics, paperwork submissions and so on – everyone mucks in!”
Speaking of paperwork, SHU Racing have also had a subtle change into how they are organised, following feedback from the previous team principal. “We found that Max (Vollans, their 2017/2018 Team Principal) found it quite hard to juggle getting the car ready and deal with the ongoing deadlines” continues Samuel. As a result they now spread the work around a core of around half a dozen heads of their different departments, who are responsible for their areas of the car and relay instructions to the rest of the team. “It feels a lot more balanced this year” said Adam Devonport, the Team, Bodywork & Aero Manager “I can get on with managing the team members while Sam can concentrate on talking to the university and high level activities”.
So how did they get on this year? “We’ve competed in the competition for some time, but with a lull around the late 2000s” explained Samuel. “However, 2018 has been our best year yet, because we were able to compete and score in every event, leading to the most successful season SHU Racing has had yet.” With this achievement now under their belt, the biggest challenge this year is to maintain this performance and improve upon it, something helped by the fact that they can iterate on the current car without needing to start a complete rebuild: “Evolution, not revolution, is key for us this year” he said. “The plan is to identify areas of the competition where we can concentrate and improve on, hopefully across the competition” added Henry, one of the second year team members.
To meet this objective for the dynamic events, Will Kearse already has a project underway. As Driver’s Environment Manager, he is currently looking to mount the car’s pedal box on the top of the frame. Based on an older design from David Gray, Powertrain Manager and one of the team’s master’s students, he and Will are working together to update and simplify the design for this new version to mount in the car, together with a gear shifter integrated into the hand clutch, something they hope will also catch the attention of the design judges – providing they can get the design right. Other projects on the cards at the moment include a planar gear system and working on a suspension system with carbon fibre components, all made with suggestions from the team’s driver Ollie.
When looking around the car, David explained that one of the longer term projects is working in partnership with Honeywell to install a turbocharger system to their KTM 500 engine. “We’ve used this block since roughly around 2013 and we’re getting more confident at how to get the most out of it” he said “but as we lose team members each year, sometimes we take a step back. We’re not ready to cut into the engine just yet, but give it a year or two and we’ll be there.” However, they are not just reliant on internal support and David and the team are grateful for the support from other teams who are using the same engine, as this helps them optimise their engine package and get it ready in time.
Meanwhile, Adam is hard at work looking into new materials and CFD analysis for some additional aero features for the car, a first for their team. “Having just come from a placement at EPM Composites, it’s the perfect fit for what I’m doing now!” laughed Adam, adding that he expects their CFD work to be complete soon. “We are looking to reuse the body moulds we made for last year so we can save some of the cost and put it into better materials for 2019, which with the added wings will help with the cornering for the dynamics.” With Samuel, David and Will having also spent time at JCB, Vauxhall and SPS Technologies, there’s the hope that what they have learned will translate to improving their car ahead of the competition – or potentially working with them as a sponsor. “JCB are already very well connected with the university in terms of training for their engineers, so we hope we will be able to further the industry-education partnership with them for this year” explained Samuel. David also agreed that having a placement is essential as a young engineer: “While I’m not sure if manufacturing is something I will be doing after graduating, the placement definitely opened my eyes to new ways of working and how to build on my experience as an engineer in industry”.
They also found that the competition helped to build their team working skills in other ways. As an example, their former Electrical Manager Tristan was brilliant at working on his own, but by the end of the year had learned how to work more effectively with the rest of the team. “It really builds your confidence being able to talk to other team members, suppliers, the university, Formula Student, sponsors and so on” explained Samuel. Their Faculty Advisor Dr. David Clegg was keen to highlight this, saying that “Formula Student is one of the only projects that fosters a great collegiate atmosphere of peer learning and knowledge sharing. It enables more senior students to mentor and pass on their experiences to the incoming students so they can succeed, which sometimes doesn’t happen in other projects.”
This focus on soft skills development has led to the team continuing a partnership with the mental health charity MIND this year. “We all joke that the competition can take over your life, but when that happens your academic work does suffer” admits Samuel. “From my own experience, I know that you can put all your energy to work on the car to distract you from things happening in your personal life, so it’s important to have a healthy balance.” Adam agrees: “it’s especially important for the first year students, some of whom haven’t lived away from home before. Trying to add the competition to all this can be a lot to deal with.” This matches a lot of the good work that Sheffield Hallam University as a whole is doing to raise awareness of mental health issues and can only be a positive aspect to the team’s experience. SHU Racing will be working with MIND to show its members that the team is an open environment, where people should have confidence to open up about any struggles. By partnering with MIND, they can point people in the correct direction for professional, local help and techniques that may aid self-help.
So what about next year’s competition and where do they hope to rank versus the world? “We’re in competition primarily against ourselves this year” said Samuel. Getting their car ready by May for testing and getting their drivers used to the car is a big part of their annual strategy and the team are confident that they can be race ready with six weeks before Silverstone next year. “One of the reasons why we took it easy on the track last year was because we didn’t have a clear idea of how good our car was, so we didn’t feel confident in going all out in the dynamics like the sprint” explained Will. “We even had an issue where our gear cable snapped and we weren’t able to do our best at the Skidpad after spending time fixing it.” Providing all the improvements go as planned, the team are targeting a place among the top 40% of cars for 2019. “We want to prove that SHU Racing are consistently improving and that other teams see us as one of the more competitive team on the grid” added Samuel “and as long as we can manage our time to improve the car in all areas we’ll get there”. It goes without saying that they want to be on equal footing with the University of Sheffield, who provide the team with support as well as good competition for flunky ball at the campsite.
The team would like to thank all their partners and sponsors for their support, in particular Solvay, IIDEA, Honeywell and BG Engineering, and they look forward to working with them again during this year’s competition.
When speaking to the team, there’s the sense that they have a clear view of how they want this year to go. Having ironed out some of the issues with team workload, deadlines and having delivered their best performing car last year, there’s a strong confidence here that they are being realistic with what they want the car to do and the results they will achieve. A massive thanks to Samuel, Will, Adam, David and Henry for their time this week, we look forward to seeing SHU Racing again at Learn to Win next month and wish them all the best in developing the team and their car!
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