Formula Student teams put finishing touches to Silverstone Racers

Formula Student teams put finishing touches to Silverstone Racers

Teams present single-seaters at AIC | 09/07/2010

Bilbao, 9.7.2010--- AIC-Automotive Intelligence Center today hosted the presentation by the Basque Country’s Formula Student Teams (Formula Student Bizkaia and Tecnun Motorsport, from Guipúzcoa) of their single-seater cars for next week’s race competition at Silverstone, an event lasting from 14 to 18 July.

More than 100 teams from universities all over the world will be competing at Silverstone. Both Basque Formula Student teams are in Class 1 for internal combustion motor vehicles. Over the 5-day event, teams are put through a series of tests and trials with the aggregate scores deciding their place in the final classification.

The event schedule is as follows:

· Wednesday 14: event opens, teams complete formal registration requirements.

· Thursday 15 “scrutineerings” begin. Scrutineering is the assessment that decides whether a vehicle fulfils safety and other standard regulations. Any car failing scrutineering is automatically eliminated from the actual race.

· Friday 16 is for static events involving Presentation, Design and Cost Judgings.

· Saturday 17 sees the beginning of the dynamic part for the teams involved: Acceleration, Autocross and Skid-pad.

· Sunday 18: the main event, Endurance: a 22-kilometer race around the Silverstone circuit. Each vehicle’s fuel consumption is assessed after the race.

Tecnun team chief Jorge González describes the Formula Student experience as “incredibly good so far, because the students are getting very high-level, top quality training that helps them develop a series of professional competencies they’d be hard put to acquire in the classroom.” González says that, this year, “in view of the vehicle we’ve come up with and the experience we gleaned last year, we expect to move into a different dimension in the classification, hopefully ending somewhere in the top 30 teams.”

Team Bizkaia chief Carlos Angulo described program assessment as “very positive indeed. The students are acquiring experience equivalent to what they would pick up in-house at a place of work. Project value added helps students find jobs in firms in the automotive industry.” Angulo is optimistic about his team’s prospects for the race this year: “With last year’s experience in the competition we’ve made some major improvements to the car and we’ll be looking to finish a lot higher up this time round.”

According to AIC Director General Inés Anitua, by developing their own vehicles, students should “improve their skills and their natural talents in areas like management, design, production and marketing within the automotive world.”

In April, in pursuit of its objective of supporting and promoting future automotive industry professionals, AIC-Automotive Intelligence Center signed a cooperation agreement with the Basque-based Formula Student teams with a view to stimulating knowledge, training and research in the industry, with particular emphasis on the new generations of engineers who come onto the job market from university.

AIC also wants the Formula Student teams to work together as a way of becoming more competitive, reducing costs and getting students used to working in teams, thus making their future working lives that much easier.

Formula Student is a learning program organized by UK mechanical engineers’ institute IMechE to aid the development of future engineering talents. Upwards of 100 European, US and Australian universities are involved in the program.

AIC is a foundation promoted and backed by Biscay Provincial Council, Amorebieta-Etxano and Ermua city halls, a group of leading-edge companies in the automotive industry and by Basque automotive cluster ACICAE. AIC integrates knowledge, technology and industrial development under one umbrella in a bid to improve competitiveness in the industry.