University News Last updated 01 August 2019
Our talented BCU Racing team have been hard at work these past few months building, creating and testing their Formula racing car in order to compete at Silverstone. This year the team achieved 25th place from 81 competing universities from all over the world. They were the best team from the West Midlands, beating strong rivals such as the University of Birmingham, Aston, Coventry, Warwick and Wolverhampton University!
Formula Student is an IMechE (Institution of Mechanical Engineers) competition, where students design, cost, promote and build a single seater race car, and compete against other universities in a set of static and dynamic events. The events are judged by experienced industry specialists from the motorsport and automotive industry. The judge’s award points reflecting the performance of the team, the implementation of engineering principles and the consideration of wider societal implications. We spoke to the Team Leader of BCU Racing, Gary Wintersgill - BSc Automotive Engineering student - who had this to say about the event:
The competition benefited students from various courses (not only Mechanical and Automotive) with an opportunity to experience real life exposure to design work, analysis, manufacturing, testing, problem solving, team work, time management, project management, budgeting and presentation. All of these transferable skills will be reflected in their degree course, plus direct hands-on experience. The event also highlighted the limitations of theoretical concepts to the application of real life problems. Jens Lahr, Senior Lecturer and Course Leader for Automotive Engineering, reinforces this by stating:
Images courtesy of IMechE (Institution of Mechanical Engineers), 2019.
