The Formula UCLan team

Around 30 UCLan students are looking to enter a prestigious motorsport competition for universities, with a car they have designed and manufactured themselves.

Formula UCLan consists of around 30 final year undergraduate and postgraduate students, all aiming to design and manufacture a race car to submit into Formula Student, an international competition at Silverstone this July.

Formula UCLan operate under the School of Computing, Engineering and Physical Sciences at the university and UCLan has been entering this competition for the last 12 years.

Last year, the team successfully entered a carbon fibre monocoque chassis and say that this year’s is a continuation and development of this.

Formula UCLan’s 2014 competition entry

The developments include looking specifically at suspension, electronic throttle control and cooling and brake systems.

Oli Taylor, team secretary is excited by the whole process and said, “At the end of the day, we are going to end up with a vehicle!”

“We enter the competition that has a set of regulations that we as a team have to build a car too, from scratch.

“It is quite challenging because only being one year long, well 9 months, we only take one year of study to do this. It can be quite hard which I guess is the idea.”

“There’s a series of race competitions where we get to drive a car and sections where we have to present to the judges.”

The competition has backing of many prestigious companies within the industry, including Shell and Mercedes. For more information, visit their website here.