After taking third place in the
2024 Formula Student Championship — organised by the UK’s
Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE), and regarded as Europe’s most-established educational engineering competition that uses motorsport to inspire students — team
FSBizkaia from the
University of the Basque Country clinched this year’s title at
Silverstone, the home of British Motorsport, in what was an all-electric top three.
While 2025 was not the first time that this Spanish team has participated in the competition, this year was certainly its most dominant and reflected the continual improvements the team has made over recent years to compete at the highest levels of the competition. The students entered a highly developed electric vehicle (EV) that put in strong performances across all the dynamic events and competed in both the ‘Cost and Manufacturing’, and ‘Engineering Design’ finals.
Vermilion Racing, from the
Technical University of Denmark, was the runner up, having retained its ‘Business Presentation Plan’ title from 2024, securing the overall ‘Static Events’ winner, and achieving a ‘solid performance’ with its EV in the dynamic events.
Return to formThe UK’s
Oxford Brookes University secured the third place this year in a return to form for the team. Despite not securing any trophies in 2024, the team experienced a resurgence this year with its four-wheel-drive EV. Adding to its trophy tally, the team also took the ‘Acceleration’ event win with a 4.2sec run, the
Faraday Institution Best EV Powertrain award, and the
Multimatic Vehicle Dynamics Excellence award.
Meanwhile, the
University of Birmingham showed that it has finally mastered its EV design, securing the ‘Endurance’ event award as it returned to the tarmac of Silverstone for the first time since it switched powertrain types.
Coventry University won the ‘Sprint’ award, while the first team to compete in the UK from mainland China,
Wuhan University of Technology, went home with the coveted
Engineering Design Award.
Emma Penney, head FS-AI statics judge, said she was pleased with the clear increase in quality from most of the those taking part. “Many showed excellent preparation, as was seen in the quality of their answers. The standard of some of their presentations were to industry-standard and the speed at which teams got to grips with the FS-AI simulators in the Technology Hub meant that many were able to progress quickly and get on track for the first time.”
Formula Student registration re-opens in the autumn for 2026.