UBRacing

Christmas is almost here but the work hasn’t stopped for the team since returning from Formula Student Germany in August!  Plans for our 22nd car, UBR22, quickly began with the success of UBR21 motivating us to be ambitious.

UBR21 in front of the Aston Webb building

We started out by setting our top design goals for the year. UBR22 will see the first diffuser added to the aerodynamics package; a greatly improved powertrain system with redesigned exhaust, fuel rail, and fuel cell; and new carbon fibre suspension components and steering column.

We are lucky to be continuing to work with our 51 sponsors, most notably our platinum sponsors: Mahle Powertrain, Northrop Grumman, Autodesk and EPM Composites Ltd. The team also welcomed a new sponsor, Siemens, who will be providing the team with software for a variety of applications from CAD to CFD and project management.

thermal imaging and the chassis

This semester has seen the car travelling all over, with the team completing a fair bit of post-competition testing at Bruntingthorpe Airfield and the Mahle Chassis Dyno, which aided our new focus on intensive data analysis and allowed us to try out our new thermal imaging camera. We also attended a test session with the Formula Student teams from Oxford Brookes, Southampton, De Montford, and Queen Mary University where we were able to exchange details of testing techniques and get to know some other teams.

We were lucky to be invited to the Malvern Festival of Innovation, an event for families and schools to promote careers in STEM. We hope to continue increasing our outreach through the year, going out to more schools and also inviting them to come to the University and tour our labs. Through this the team had the fantastic opportunity to have a tour of the Morgan Motor factory, we think UBR21 fit in rather well!

Members of the team at the Morgan Motor factory

The team are hoping to complete the car earlier this year for more pre-competition testing. With the manufacture of our carbon fibre monocoque starting, we are well on our way to completing the car ready for its launch on 22 June.