Waikato students' racing car a winner
16 January 2017
University of Waikato engineering students are getting more and more adept at building and racing Formula SAE cars.
A team of 10 students travelled to Melbourne to enter their vehicle in an international Formula SAE competition and came ninth out of 32 universities; importantly, they won the main event ‒ Endurance.
Fourth-year student Nathan Senior worked on the suspension system of the car. “We were a small team compared to many of the other universities competing, so we were pretty pleased with our overall result, especially winning endurance.”
Endurance involved 18 laps of an autocross track with a driver swap in the middle. Other categories included acceleration, skidpan, and autocross. “We were also assessed on static events including business, cost and design," Nathan says. "So we had to present a manufacturing and marketing strategy, a detailed cost of the car if it were to be mass manufactured and then we had industry professionals, even some Formula 1 experts, come and assess the design." Read more
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