UK Formula Student teams have expressed their gratitude to Schaeffler UK (www.schaeffler.co.uk) for the company’s on-going support in supplying precision bearings for their racing cars, along with technical support.

For this year’s event, Schaeffler UK has again supplied bearings and technical support to 10 UK Formula Student teams, saying that it is fully committed to helping attract young people into engineering (it has supported Formula Student teams in the UK since 1998).

On 17-21 July, more than 100 teams from around the world will gather at Silverstone for the Formula Student 2019 finals. Run by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) in partnership with various industrial sponsor companies, Formula Student is Europe’s biggest educational motor-sport event (it celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2018).

The competition promotes careers and excellence in engineering by challenging university students to design, build, develop, market and compete as a team with a small single-seat racing car.

The competition comprises challenges and events (including an all-electric racing-car class) with a different number of points allocated for each. These include tests to assess the cars’ fuel economy, acceleration and endurance, as well as the design and business case prepared by each of the teams.

The sponsored teams are free to choose products from the Schaeffler catalogue when designing their cars. Matthew Brown, technical director of Sheffield University’s team, said: “Knowing we can choose anything from the Schaeffler catalogue has given us a lot of design freedom; as a result, we were able to develop a new suspension concept.

"Furthermore, the support we receive in terms of design guides has helped us massively in selecting the best bearings for the job.”