Team Derby Motorsport awarded cash boost for car

The Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) visited the University of Derby last Friday (March 27), to award Team Derby Motorsport with a grant for £3,000, after the team won this years’ ‘Rookie Team Award’.

Fabian Welford-Tuitt from IMechE presented the cheque to Andrew Menzies, Team Leader of Team Derby Motorsport. They were both joined by Ilias Oraifige, Deputy Head of Department for Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering at Derby.

Team Derby Motorsport is made up of 18 undergraduate and postgraduate students, the majority of which study Motorsport Engineering at the University of Derby. The team will race against 135 other teams from 28 different countries at Formula Student 2015, which takes place from July 8-12, 2015 at Silverstone.

Formula Student 2015 – run by IMechE - is the world’s largest student motorsport event and challenges student engineers to design, build and race a single seat racing car in one year.

It is the first year the Derby team has entered the competition as a Class 1 team. Their single seat car will be powered by a 600cc Yamaha R6 engine and drives the rear wheels through a chain driven Quaife Automatic Torque Biasing (ATB) differential. The chassis is a custom steel space frame with a vacuum formed plastic body. The front and rear suspension is fully independent double wishbones with pull and push rod actuated dampers and customer uprights and hubs.

Andrew Menzies, Team Leader of Team Derby Motorsport, said: “As winners of IMechE’s ‘Rookie Team Award’ we are looking to use the prize money to fit extra data logging components to the car to collect valuable data for the development of our future cars.

“We are very proud to compete in Formula Student Class 1 for the first time this year and as Motorsport Engineering students we are very excited to use what we learn on this course to build our own race car, get it on the track and show potential employers what we can do.”

Chris Smout, Senior lecturer in Motorsport Engineering added: “It is fantastic for University of Derby students to take part in this event. The Formula Student 2015 competition encompasses the many facets that engineering projects include, enabling the students to work in as real world situations as possible.

Not only are design and manufacturing important to the success of the vehicle – but communication, project planning, costing, management, marketing and teamwork are all equally as vital for the project. Working so closely with industrial partners, suppliers and sponsors also forges strong links for the future and are of massive benefit for the students’ skillset.”