Last week, students from the University of Malta Racing (UoMR) team took part in the UK edition of the Formula Student competition held in Silverstone.
Formula Student is an international, FIA approved competition that brings together top Universities around the world, requiring teams to design, build and race a formula style open wheeled car.
The Maltese team, consisting of 35 students, competed with their car, the FC-17B, which was student built from the design phase to the actual manufacture. Other competing universities included the defending UK champions Cardiff and Monash University from Australia.
Competing for the first time in Silverstone, after previous experience in the Italian competition held at Varano, the team was required to prepare for several dynamic and static events.
The static events included a design presentation, where the team was required to explain to a panel of judges from leading automotive companies the decisions taken during the design phase and their effectiveness of the car. A costing event described the method of team spending on the car and budgeting from the purchase of raw materials to the cost of manufacture. Finally, a business presentation saw the team present a mock business pitch to a set of investors in order to justify investment into the team, as if it was a startup company.
Finally, the dynamic events consisted of a skidpad event, designed to test the handling and cornering of the car in a figure of 8, a sprint of one lap for the fastest time, and the endurance event.
The latter one was the one that the team focused primarily on throughout the year. Given the high attrition rate of cars malfunctioning or breaking down during the 22 laps of this event, the team focused on competing with a car that was reliable enough to complete it.
Competing head to head with combustion as well as electrically driven teams, UoMR drove their turbocharged 4 cylinder powered car through the harrowing 22 laps of the endurance, successfully completing the event for the first time in a competition. The team was one of 24 cars to finish this event, from 81 competing teams. This led to an overall placing of 29th.
Further results of the team include the following:
Endurance: 19th
Skidpad: 26th
Sprint: 28th
Business Presentation: 11th
Cost Report: 21st
Design Presentation: 59th
The team would like to first and foremost express their utmost gratitude to their sponsors, without their support this success would not have been possible. The team’s main sponsors include The Ministry for Education and Employment, Enemed e-power, Trelleborg Sealing Solutions, SKF, Silvercraft Products Ltd, PwC Malta, Bahco Tools, Attrans International Transport, Empav Engineering, G Molton, MCST and Zoqdi Racing Garage.
Furthermore, UoMR would like to thank Dr. Ing. Maurizio Fenech, the team supervisor, for his guidance throughout the years.
This is not just an engineering competition, and UoMR is continuously seeking new student members from different faculties, particularly business and finance students. If you want to gain first hand experience handling the finances of a project that is professionally audited, or developing your business skills by marketing the team to sponsors and securing funding, feel free to contact the team on their Facebook page facebook.com/uomracing or at info@uomracing.com.