Hello from the workshop!
Now exams are over, we have been working full-time on MAN-23, preparing for Formula Student UK in July. We’re proud to announce our vehicle status report has passed, so we will be competing in Formula Student class (and hopefully all of the dynamic events) this year! This means we’re busy bees in the workshop, completing the vehicle assembly and also preparing for the static events.
This year is the first time anyone from our team this year has been to competition – the last time we made it to Silverstone was July 2019, before practically all of this year’s team had even started at the University of Manchester. Are we excited? You bet we are!
As this is our first blog post, we wanted to update everyone on what we have done and achieved this year.
The start of the academic year means the start of recruitment season. We attended both the SU and MACE societies’ fairs, talking to prospective team members about who we are and what we do. After receiving a record number of applications for our IC, EV, AI, and business teams, we then invited applicants to our recruitment challenges, where we got to see them showcase themselves and their skills. It was great to see so many people show interest in the team and get stuck into the challenges, and we’re proud to have built a solid team for the 2022/23 season.
In October, we helped represent the University of Manchester at two open days. It was great to have the opportunity to inspire future engineers with our project and car, and to network with many people (prospective students and parents alike!) who share the same passion for motorsports and engineering. We also took this opportunity to practise our presenting skills, which will hopefully help us in the design judging events!
November started off with Learn to Win, where we met the judges and found out what they were looking for at competition. We also enjoyed meeting other teams and schmoozing our sponsors, including Ansys and MathWorks. This was also an opportunity to debut our shiny new Clothes2Order branded t-shirts!
We also held our drivers’ selection karting social in November, where prospective drivers showed their skills on the track at Teamsport Victoria. Team leaders prioritised both speed and finesse when picking drivers, settling on 5 careful and fast drivers for competition who have also been working on the car and design event entries. Spoiler alert – we will be SUPER fast (if we make it to the dynamic events…).
We were lucky enough to have been invited to visit University of Manchester alumnus and 2x 24 hours Le Mans LMP2 champion Mike Newton at his site in Cheshire, which includes the likes of Speedworks Motorsport/Toyota Gazoo Racing UK, Praga UK and Idola Motorsport/VR Motorsport. Our team were very excited to have the opportunity to see the operations of real race teams and their cars, as well as learning from Mike’s extensive experience in motorsport.
In March, we were invited to attend a marketing masterclass with our sponsor ABAC in Warrington. The team learnt the fundamentals of marketing and their real-world applications and the importance of keeping an up-to-date online presence. We have been utilising these philosophies in our long-term social media strategy, and hope to build on these as we gain more experience and knowledge.
Alongside all of these events, we have been building a racing car! We completed the welding of our chassis in January, with suspension fitted to create a rolling chassis in March. The Formula Student UK competition requires us to have an impact attenuation device (impact attenuator, IA) on the front bulkhead of the car, so in April we made a trip to Cranfield Impact Centre to test it and ensure it is compliant with the rules. The IA was tested dynamically, with a weighted impact sled with an unyielding impact barrier crushing the IA mounted onto a wall on a test jig.
Follow us on our Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn to get more insight into the testing phase of the car. We cannot wait to meet the other Fomrula Student teams again at Silverstone in 5 weeks!