Cardiff University’s student racing team has won the annual Formula Student competition at Silverstone, becoming the first UK winners in the competition’s 19-year history.
Made up of 56 students from the University’s School of Engineering, the Cardiff Racing team beat off competition from over 100 university teams from all over the world.
Throughout the competition, which took place 20-23 July, the building and engineering skills of the students were put to the test, as the car was subjected to serious scrutiny by the judges, before the students took their car onto the track to perform a number of speed and agility tests.
Once all of the judging was complete, the ‘Cardiff Racing’ team was crowned Class 1 Overall Winners, finishing ahead of the University of Birmingham in second place and Karlstad University from Sweden in third.
Mark Eaton, a Cardiff University academic involved in the Cardiff Racing team, said: “Formula Student is a fantastic and highly competitive event. It takes considerable dedication, hard work and skill to win such a competition, and we could not be more proud of our students for this achievement.”
This year, the team’s car was named “Gwyneth” after the mother of ex-Formula One driver Tom Pryce, who was born in Denbighshire in 1949 and remains the only Welsh driver to ever win a Formula One race. He died in a racing accident in South Africa aged 27.
Axminster Tools & Machinery (
www.axminster.co.uk) was one of the team’s sponsors and team members made use of an Axminster CNC Technology iKX3 mill to manufacture parts for the car.
The Formula Student competition is organised each year by the Institute of Mechanical Engineers, and students fromaround the world are invited to take part in the four-day event at Silverstone.
The tests that the cars go through are split into two sections — static and dynamic.
The static events are judged on the cost of the car, presentation and design; the dynamic events consist of a figure-of-eight skid-pan trial, acceleration and sprint events, and finally the endurance event.