Please introduce Team Hare!
Simon Roberts: Team HARE is the university of Huddersfield's award-winning Formula Student team with HARE standing for Huddersfield Automotive Racing Enterprise. 2019 saw us celebrate our 20th year competing with some good results over the years. We build competitive combustion cars with the design philosophy changing through the years; most recently focusing on reliability.
The team is usually made up of around 10 – 20 students with the strong 2019 team being made up of 13 MEng students.
Chris Halton: This year’s team is made up of 5 MEng students who will be managing the project along with the fantastic support of around 10 Final Year Project students. One of our aims for this year is to be more inclusive of all years across the BEng program to introduce students to the project earlier. This is to ultimately continue to improve the standard of our Formula Student teams moving forward.
This year, the management structure is as follows:
-
Chris Halton – Team Principal
- Ben Rhys – Aerodynamics Co-ordinator
- Dan Dunbar – Chassis & Suspension Co-ordinator
- Alex Tarmey – Powertrain Co-ordinator
- Ethan Magee – Drivetrain Co-ordinator
Simon: Over the last year the university has been incredibly supportive as they realised the effort the team were putting in. This led to an increase in funding and lots of support from staff.
Chris: This year, we hope to show the same enthusiasm to keep the university staff on board and continue to perform to the high standards we set ourselves.
Congratulations on winning the Breakthrough Award at FS2019, how did the team react?
Simon: The team were ecstatic. Though we were few in number, we still gave Oxford Brookes a shock when we exploded with excitement behind them at the presentation. We are so proud of the achievement as it was recognition of all hard work we had put in over the year.
To go from 21 points in 2018 to over 600 in the space of one year is impressive – what elements do you feel contributed to the success?
Simon: Constant hard work and utter commitment of the team members. I have worked with 4 different iterations of Team HARE and had never seen a team so driven to succeed but with such a considered approach. My comanagers did an incredible job to put in place strong engineering practices and keep the whole team working to strict deadlines. Finally, the whole team were accountable to each other and it was important we had good chemistry between all members.
6th place overall is a fantastic achievement – are there any people or sponsors you would like to thank?
Simon: Yes! We would love to thank all of our sponsors but especially our gold level sponsors Thomas Brown Engineering, Tri-Cast, Denso, 3M BIC, EvoScann, TEI, Kappa and Metals4u for all their incredible support over the year. We could not have done it without them and their willingness to help.
Also, a huge thanks to all the university staff who supported us through the year including, but not limited to, the academics, technical services team, finance team and senior leadership team for guiding and putting up with us for the last year.
Finally, a big shout out to Luke Barron for his commitment to helping the team and going above and beyond to ensure we had everything we needed to succeed.
What are your objectives for the 2020 competition?
Chris: We are extremely pleased with last year's success and would definitely be aiming to break the top 10 again. We see the team moving in the right direction to be fighting for the top spot amongst UK teams.
This year we aim to further improve reliability in the dynamic events with increased testing and optimised sub systems. Improved driveability in reference to the endurance event will also be a primary focus.
In the long term, as a team, we are very interested in pushing the development of a car for the EV competition, initially through Class 2 and then ultimately Class 1.
How have you managed the handover process from 2019 to 2020?
Chris: Despite a lot of the management team from 2019 having graduated, the 2020 team have had great contact with the previous management helping to get the new developments off and running as quickly as possible. We are also organising a meet up between 2019 and 2020 at Bruntingthorpe in the coming weeks to run the 2019 car.
What is new and exciting for your team this year?
Chris: The management team this year is significantly reduced down to 5 from 13. Although some may view this as putting us at a disadvantage, we see this is a great opportunity to involve more students from the wider engineering undergraduate program that may have been previously overlooked.
We are currently in the design and sponsorship acquisition phase. We hope to begin building the car in the new year around February in time for a rigorous 8 week testing schedule prior to the event to fine tune and stress test the car.
What have been your biggest challenges so far how have you overcome them?
Simon: In previous years, it has been getting a car to competition in a ready to race condition. This was overcome by the sheer will power of the team and complete commitment from all.
Chris: So far this year, having such a reduced management team has caused us to make prioritisation decisions much sooner. We realised quickly that this wasn’t a year for any significant innovation, but more about getting the basics right and assuring we work on last year’s mistakes to build a reliable competition car.
What made you join Formula Student?
Simon: the exposure to the entire process, from conception to actually driving the car always fascinated me and over the years and the challenge is in many ways a once in a lifetime opportunity that I couldn’t bear to miss out on.
Chris: Formula Student encapsulates all the reasons why I chose my degree. Having been interested in motorsport from a young age, I have always wanted to know what processes and decisions go into designing and building a competition car. Having the opportunity to be Team Principal this year is a great privilege and I see this as an opportunity to further develop my understanding of the whole process.
What has been your proudest moment at Formula Student?
Simon: Seeing that car cross the finish line of every event that it started closely followed by winning that sixth-place spot and the Breakthrough Award.
What advice would you give for your fellow teams?
Chris: The most important thing is to get the basics right first and ensuring the car is fit for purpose before attempting any major refinement and optimisation.
Simon: Be careful not to overreach. Play to your strengths and try to engage as many people as possible.
How can we keep up to date with you?
Website: asteria.hud.ac.uk/teamhare
Twitter: @Team_HARE
Instagram: @teamhare
Facebook: Team HARE
Finally, any rivals you would like to call out?
Simon: Every UK team but especially the Yorkshire teams. At FSUK we 3D printed a trophy to give to the top performing Yorkshire team and were then embarrassed to give it to ourselves. We look forward to the other Yorkshire teams challenging us for the top performing Yorkshire team.
