Designing and building a single seat racing car for the educational motorsport competition in 2015

City University, with WCoMC's help, prepare for the Uni performance trials at Silverstone ....

I am an Alumni of City University - I studied Mechanical Engineering. Over the last year I have been a mentor at the University to one of the final year Civil Engineering students. The  University has developed a very popular and successful mentoring programme which helps students achieve their first important career step. I found the process to be very satisfying and my mentee achieved excellent exam results and is now on a Masters Degree at UCL.I get a great sense of achievement from mentoring and will be commencing with a new Mentee next month.

I have also recently become involved with an exciting project at the University called ‘Formula Student’. This is Europe’s most established educational motorsport competition and is run by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and backed by industry and high profile engineers (the Patron is Ross Brawn OBE). Universities from across the globe are challenged (as part of a degree-level project for a selected number of students) to design and build a single seat racing car in order to compete in static and dynamic events , which demonstrate the team’s understanding and test the performance of the vehicle.

The City University Team is called ‘City Racing’ with a website www.city-racing.co.uk. My role is to take over from the existing team leader who is retiring and provide overall management of the project including gaining sponsorships and funding. The challenge for the Team will be designing and building a car over the next few months for the 2015 competition. Some of the German Universities competing have large budgets and one of the challenges for me will be to increase the funding  as this has a direct impact on the design and performance of the vehicle. This is held at Silverstone over three days next summer. City Racing is comprised of 3rd and 4th year Engineering students. The cars are designed and built by the students with support and advice provided by the School’s academic and technical staff. A number of Alumni from Formula Student now occupy senior positions at nearly every Formula One team.

Freeman Alan Latham