For all those that are reading this, welcome to the blog for Formula Student 2013-2014!

Firstly, I would like to thank our sponsors for their continued support in the quest for the University of Hertfordshire to be the best team in Formula Student! I would also like to thank our supporters of the team and ask them to keep the faith for another year…

Secondly, I must introduce myself. My name is Stephanie Alexander and I am in my final year of my Motorsport Technology degree. I am one of a large group of students working on the car this year and I am glad to be part of such a special project! In this blog, I will take you all through the journey from officially receiving a project relating to Formula Student to competition, so you can see through our eyes the hard work we put in to make the best race car possible.

Coming back to university this year, we were immediately told that we had to decide on our final year projects. To help the students choose, some of the projects had lectures to help introduce what they entailed and what was to be expected of you. Our Formula Student team held one of these lectures and directly told us how much time we would be expected to devote to our project if we got given one. I will admit that I became worried that I could help the team perform as well as they have in recent years, but I have a belief that if your dreams don’t scare you, then you are not pushing yourself hard enough. This is what I have worked for in these last three years and it would be foolish to turn the chance down. So I, along with the rest of the students, applied to be on this project and I also had the opportunity to state what area I would like to work on in particular. After a short wait, we found out what our official projects were and had our first meeting as a team to discuss the way forward.

As a chance for the new team to get together and get to know each other, we took a trip to Bruntingthorpe to run UH16, last year’s car and have a BBQ. It was a successful event with everyone getting involved and taking notes from last year’s team members as well as looking at ideas to implement for this year. We have also run a social trip to Rye House Kart Raceway. This was a fantastic opportunity for us to get out there and compete against each other.

There is also the learning of the rules and the requirements of the static and dynamic events for the competition. This proves to be harder than expected because the rule book is 160 pages long!! These rules dictate measurements of the race car, materials to be used and parts that have to be included. It’s a good challenge because this is exactly how Formula 1 teams have to work in every championship year so getting used to this early is key.

As a team, we have now started getting our concept for this year together. Departments are talking between each other to co-ordinate the efforts and make sure that we are all on the same page. Some really innovative parts may be in the pipeline so I look forward to what waits ahead.

Well, that is everything from me for now. Look out for the next entry to come shortly!

P.S. Don’t forget to follow us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to keep up to date with everything we are doing…