GCU Racing reflect on their experience at Formula Student

A group of GCU students descended onto Silverstone Racetrack alongside thousands of other students from across the world to take part in Formula Student (one of Europe’s most notorious educational engineering competitions) with a car they had designed and built from scratch.

15 members of GCU Racing made their Formula Student debut, coming 54th out of 63 competing teams. The competition, which took place in July, sees teams from across the world put through their paces with a series of static and dynamic events over several days that truly puts the teams and their cars to the test.

Due to unforeseen circumstances, the team had only five weeks to build their car and were not able to present a finished car to the judges, but what they had created in a short time-frame was enough to score them some points.

The team plan on using the experience as a learning opportunity with hopes of returning with a bigger team and a competitive car next year.

Robbie McGregor, Business Head for GCU Racing said: “The first thing we actually went through was the business presentation. We didn’t fully understand what we were going into, we thought we did but it was different to what we expected. It was properly like Dragon’s Den, it starts as soon as you walk through the door. It was quite intense.”

TJ Scott, Senior Technical Officer for the team said: “Overall the judges were happy with the car, they were quite impressed by what we had built in the time we had.”

Unfortunately, the team missed out on the racing aspect of the competition, which is where most of the points are available. However, TJ said: “We’re happy with the foundation that we’ve laid. This year we were just happy just to turn up at Silverstone. Next year, we’re not turning up just to be there, we’re going to compete.

“The time at Silverstone has actually formed a race team, as opposed to a bunch of folk with a weird hobby. The competitive edge has started to set in, we’re all looking towards not just getting a car there anymore, now we’re looking very seriously into how we make our car good, and how we make it fast.

Our goal for next year is to go from the bottom 10 to the top 15.”

What the team were able to achieve in such a short period of time, compared to what others had achieved over a period of months, has left GCU Racing with quite the reputation around the Formula Student paddock. Robbie added “a lot of people know us in the paddock now because they saw us down there without a finished car and wondered what was going on.

“We’ve now set an expectation, people have seen what we could do with five weeks to build a car. Now that we’ve got the time, we really need to show the paddock what we can do, and that is our plan.”

The team are keen to expand, as their trip to Silverstone has proven that people with a variety of skillsets are required in order to achieve success in the competition. Robbie said: “It’s not just a place for engineers, there’s business, marketing and law students and loads more. Formula Student isn’t just a competition where engineers design a car to race, you’ve also got the business aspect and costing. It is a multi-disciplinary event. We’re hoping to get people from all across the University for next year and have a much bigger team because we need them.”

By sourcing students from across the University, the team are hoping to improve job prospects for students on different degree programmes. Companies such as Aston Martin, Red Bull, Mercedes and McLaren Applied had sent representatives to the event to scout potential students for graduate programme and future careers in motorsport.

The team’s trip to Silverstone has also brought a new wave of motivation to the team, TJ said: “There’s very much a drive, it’s gone from being just a group of people having fun with something to a proper team, who don’t only want to play at racing, but properly race.

“This year is going to be one of the heaviest developmental years this team has seen because a lot of these teams have had many years to build up. Now we want to make a three or four year jump in terms of how the team functions.

We are all very proud of the way the team came together. Everyone really pulled together and pulled their weight and personally I’m really proud of how many members of the team stepped up; first and second years doing the work of third years, and people who’ve never even picked up a tool before really getting stuck in and helping.”

Robbie also added: “We just want to say a massive thank you to everyone who’s ever supported or helped us, we really appreciate it.”

If you would like to join GCU Racing and be a part of the team for Formula Student 2024, check out their website. You can also follow them on Facebook and Instagram.

If there are any students currently looking for Honours or Masters’ projects and would like to discuss potential projects with the team, please email racing@gcu.ac.uk.