For a budding engineer eyeing a career in motorsport or automotive, the IMechE’s Formula Student competition offers the chance to participate in a widely recognised engineering and manufacturing challenge that can boost employment prospects while developing the skills that are often needed in industry.
Perhaps most importantly, the competition is resolutely practical, offering engineering designers the chance to build, test and race a single-seat car. Ultimately, the ingenuity of the engineers is tested in a real-world application, and in competitive circumstances. So motivated students who want to develop their skills place the chance to participate in Formula Student high on their list of priorities.
However, one point often noted about the competition is that, generally, British teams tend to fare less well than their European counterparts, and this despite the world-leading nature of the UK motorsport industry. Indeed, no British team has ever won the event.
An explanation for why European teams tend to do better could lie in what is, arguably, the greater devotion of resources to teams in countries such as Germany, says British engineer James Major, who took part in Formula Student at the University of Hertfordshire in 2008.
Another person who is well-placed to comment on differences between a British and European engineering education is Jonathan Rice, a graduate of Queen’s University Belfast who is now faculty advisor for Formula Student at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden – one of the most successful teams in the competition’s 15-year history.
Rice says Chalmers takes Formula Student seriously, with the competition being officially embedded in the university’s academic system. The college has been involved in Formula Student since 2002, and over time experience has built up. “Formula Student is grounded within the education system at Chalmers. We have educational objectives that must be met and legal regulations that must be followed, but also we obtain teaching and facility support and can use the name of Chalmers when seeking external partners. This helps in the area of knowledge transfer and support to new students each year,” he says.
Chalmers initially regarded the competition as interesting because of its combination of development of engineering skills among youngsters and, even more importantly, their practical application: the ability to conceive, design, build, test and race a car.
Initial attempts were not a success in terms of placings on the podia for the various elements of the competition, says Rice. But in terms of an engineering education, the competition was a huge learning opportunity. “We looked at how we could learn from it. The next year, we came back with a cracking car which finished second overall. That was in the space of a year,” says Rice.
Swedes up to speed: Chalmers has been one of the most successful teams
In 2012, when Chalmers won the competition outright, it was with a new team. Rice’s colleague Marcus Lindner, who runs Formula Student on a day-to-day basis for Chalmers, says it is important to have a fresh set of eyes looking at each new design and build of car. Rice adds: “It is super-important to document everything, but at the end of the day you have to start from scratch, with a new set of students and educate them up – and in nine months they are at Silverstone, competing.”
The project attracts a lot of interest within the university; participation equals a quarter of academic credits for a year. But it’s still a lot of work, and that can make people hesitant. “We have a good number of applicants, and that makes us confident we can assemble a team that can do the job,” says Rice.
The year-long timescale means the project is intense, but he says recruitment companies in Sweden regard Formula Student as a golden ticket. “You’re bumped high up the pile – Volvo is one of the potentials, but there is also National Electric Vehicle Sweden, which now owns Saab, and a company called Cevt.”
Formula Student graduates from Chalmers also go off into aerospace and oil and gas, for example. Lindner says: “The ambition of Formula Student is to deliver the engineers of tomorrow: it doesn’t matter where they go.”
Chalmers also believes that when Formula Student graduates enter the workplace, they get up to speed more quickly. “One of the important things about the competition is that you get the full picture,” says Rice. The project teaches business and budgeting skills – as well as teamwork, he says.
Back in the UK, Formula Student can help British students find relevant employment, too. James Major was able to secure a position at motorsport transmission specialist Xtrac following his participation in the competition at the University of Hertfordshire.
Historically, the Hertfordshire team has not enjoyed the success of Chalmers. But Major’s team finished fifth in 2008 in Germany, and won class 1A in 2009 in the UK with the competition’s first electric car. Alternative powertrains are expected to become increasingly prominent in coming years, in line with trends in the industry more generally.
Still a way to go: Britain has yet to produce an overall winner
Major says participants tend to do better in their studies and develop a good work ethic. “As an engineer, they sell things to you and Formula Student was one of them. I felt it would make me more employable – that’s one of the major draws.”
Formula Student brought him not just the learning of basic engineering skills but another element: all-round personal development, he says. “I was the project leader on the electric car, and the range of tasks you have to carry out – from running meetings to developing budgets and the documents you have to submit – rounds you in skills beyond engineering.”
Since graduating, Major has worked not only at Xtrac but also at Formula One team Force India. “Being involved in the competition is a great footing into motorsport. It’s good to continue to be involved beyond university,” he says.
Of the competition’s inception, original Formula Student chairman and former IMechE president John Wood says: “There was a growing feeling in industry that we were losing something with the education of students. The universities were turning out students with pretty good theoretical knowledge but not a lot of practical experience.”
Formula Student was designed to fill that gap, he says. “If you go back to my generation, we used to buy second-hand cars and take them to bits and fix them up. But you can’t fiddle around with engines so easily now without ruining the emissions controls. We were conscious in industry that there was a need for more practical experience in terms of doing things with your hands, turning designs into reality, and working as a team and to deadlines. They were things that university education wasn’t giving graduates but that were needed in industry,” he says.
The inspiration for Formula Student came from the US Society of Automotive Engineers, which was running something similar in Detroit. “We began to wonder why we couldn’t have a ‘Formula IMechE’ around about the mid-1990s,” says Wood. “I ran Mira at that time, and gave some UK teams a chance to prepare for a competition in America.” US teams then reciprocated and sent their own teams to the UK. “We took the event to the NEC, and gradually it got bigger and bigger. What was exciting was that we underestimated the enthusiasm Formula Student would generate among the students.”
The intention was to run a purely UK event, but the interest from international teams enabled it to grow. However, Wood stresses: “The reason Formula Student was set up when I was at the IMechE was to service the needs of the British engineering universities. A number of the front-running universities embraced this, and it wasn’t just the students – it was the engineering departments. They could build it into their curriculum and make it something that would excite and motivate the students.”
Making progress: Hertfordshire teams have won plaudits over the years
Eventually, the competition became a recruitment aid for the universities. It also results in massive cross-fertilisation of ideas between the colleges that compete.
“Engineering is a small world globally, and you can get to know your peers,” says Wood. “People who have met in Formula Student have gone on to work together many times in their careers.”