Racing to success
More than 150 UofG students worked hard to produce Scotland’s first on-track, fully student-built electric Formula Student race car, in time for an international student engineering competition in July 2023.
The annual Formula Student UK Competition is organised by the IMechE, and challenges university teams from around the world to build and race single-seater high-performance cars against each other, with finals held at Silverstone each summer.
The competition gives university teams the chance to demonstrate their technical analysis, engineering design and manufacturing skills through the delivery of a Formula-style race car. Each car must pass a strict scrutineering check before competing on-track in four separate dynamic driving events, while students take to the floor and deliver three stand-up presentations on their design, business plan, and cost and manufacture processes to a set of industry-experienced judges.
In 2022 the UofG team took first place in the competition, beating dozens of other teams from around the world for the top spot. They are only the third UK team to win first place in the competition’s 25-year history.
The competition has an ever-increasing 'sustainability aspect', with teams judged according to their environmental consideration for choice of materials, delivery cost and efficiency of their vehicle. With support from the Chancellor’s Fund, and following two years of research and design, the UofG team brought their first electric vehicle design through to manufacture on our campus. The team managed to position 15th overall in the competition at Silverstone and scooped third place in the Design event and 7th in Cost & Manufacturing.
Find out more about the Chancellor's Fund
This article was first published in Giving to Glasgow, 2023.