UPRacing’s Class 1 IC team have reason to celebrate this year: comprised of around 60 students, the largest size that the team has ever been, they are now in their tenth year as a team and hope to capitalise on their experience of not only producing a car but managing the team as well.
“We’ve made a few changes to the organisation of the team for 2017/2018” explained Adam, UPRacing’s Team Leader for Class 1. “Where most teams will have specific disciplines for each area of the car, we have consolidated them to Design, Operations (which includes our social, marketing, sponsorship and events) and Manufacture. This allows the team to work in a more fluid way and can get a much better understanding about how all the different components work together.”
“This year we’ve also changed the leadership structure as well” explains Ed, who has taken on the new role of Vice Team Leader. “This means that Adam can concentrate on the detail-oriented, higher level and strategic stuff while I deal with the day to day, week to week stuff. I also operate as a devil’s advocate for his thought processes too! However, if I’m not around then team members can still go to Adam for sign off and to ask questions.”
When asking them about what they have been up to, it sounds like this season has been a mixed bag. While they have more members than usual, a lot of long-standing and experienced team members have been lost as they graduate and move away to other activities. “We lost our Head of Design guy who had been with us for 7 years, which has left some big shoes to fill. However, we can also use this as an opportunity for newer members to step up to the plate,” related Adam. And it’s not just the design area that has seen difficulties. “In previous years we’ve had more experienced fabricators in the team that have put the car together relatively quickly, but this year we’ve gone for a laser-notched steel chassis that we will be spending more time to put together properly by hand” The team have also opted to continue using 10” rims instead of the 13” from 2016 and are going for a more iterative design this year, concentrating on the systems that they can improve to get more performance, like the suspension and oil system.
2018 is also the last year that Adam and Ed will be competing, as they will be going straight into graduate placements after the competition. As a result, they have already considered how to overcome this challenge and have started the process of shortlisting existing team members to take over from them and solving the issue of knowledge transfer. “We hope to have selected our successors by April and then they can start shadowing us to learn what they need to, like talking to the university about funding and how to get the team organised so that deadlines are met” explained Adam. “These are very different from the sort of engineering skills you would expect the team would need but are essential to get things done.”
Both teams hard at work on a Wednesday afternoon
On the subject of deadlines for testing the car, both Adam and Ed smiled and openly winced. “We would love to be able to test earlier than we have done in the past” Ed laughed. “Not only is it a good thing, it also helps boost morale for the guys who have been working on the team all year and gets them excited for the main competition.” The plan is to organise some testing around Spring and they are open to the idea of meeting up with SUFST for some joint testing initiatives – watch this space for more news on that – though it is all dependant on how much time they have left once the car is fully ready.
As for goals at Formula Student, Adam and Ed have high hopes for scoring this year and are aiming for a team best of 250 points total, though their objectives have been set with a large amount of realism and Adam in particular seems keen to stay focused on what they can reasonably achieve. Their plan is to score highly in the Static events, where they have been strongest in the past, and hope that with a more thoroughly tested and optimised car they can get through more of the dynamic events and build up their points haul.
UPRacing tear up the sprint at FS2017
Given 2018 marks the 10th year of UPRacing, it seems fitting that in their tenth year the team has also seen the growth of a new Class 2 electric vehicle team. Born out of former members of the university’s FS team, Class 2 team leader Ollie Plucknett explains that breaking away from the Class 1 IC team was a great opportunity to start afresh and build up a knowledge base in a new technology for the competition. “We’re still a small team - we only just got to ten full-time members recently, but we think we have the skills to start putting a formidable entry together. For example, one of our guys built a CNC mill in his flat and another comes from a background of drag racing. Between their mechanical and fabrication skills, we hope these are going to be really helpful in the future when we get to building the car”.
When it comes to battery technology, they already have an existing design for their battery with split cells that aims to provide better performance while distributing the weight. Having the right expertise and enthusiastic partners has made all the difference for their fledgling team so far: “high voltage systems still scare me a bit” admitted Ollie, “but we are lucky in that our team member Chris is a really experienced spark who is at home working on electrical systems. He’s already been downsizing some of the electrical systems on the Class 1 car for this year, so we know he will be an essential part of the car in the coming months”. The team would like to thank local company Altertek for their support so far.
In terms of the summer competition, Ollie is very optimistic at their prospects and spoke excitedly about combining his experience of past competitions and the expertise that his fellow team mates are bringing to the table. Work has already begun on producing a first draft of their design and business presentations but to share all the details here would spoil the surprise. Sufficed to say, they have plenty of innovative ideas up their sleeves and the technical means and talent to make them happen, so keep an eye out for this growing team during the presentations!
Looking long term, the Class 2 team hope to get some experience in the competition this year, continue with finalising the design and fabrication as a Class 2 entry in 2018/2019 and finally enter a working Class 1 car for 2020. Talking to Adam, Ed and Ollie about the future of propulsion systems, they all agreed that ICs still had their place and while there is plenty of work still to do on Electric Vehicles, it’s an exciting opportunity to start work on. Each identified different areas that they would like to develop for an electric vehicle entry, including making a working energy recovery system and improving the working range of the vehicle for the competition, so there’s plenty on the roadmap to keep busy with over the next two years.
Adam, Ed and Ollie would like to send a massive thank you to all the members for their hard work and efforts; without them, UPRacing just wouldn’t exist.
Our congratulations to the team on 10 years and thanks for spending the afternoon showing us around -
we look forward to seeing how their two teams get on at Formula Student. In the meantime, keep up to date on their news via their website and social media channels - look out for the black and purple car on the track!