Motorsports Engineering

Course delivery is via a mixture of lectures, seminars, tutorials, practical sessions and independent study, that latter is an important part of your degree.

The student workshop provides a centre for those seeking careers in the design and development of products. There is a race facility where cars are prepared for race activities.

The composites workshop is used for a variety of activities from research on resin infusion to the development of F3 hovercraft.

Formula Student develops a strong understanding of the design and development of the vehicles and the nature of team members. Masterclasses and formal meetings are used together with the facilities in the workshops.

CAD facilities include SolidWorks, FLUENT (CFD), COSMOS, Nastran and Ricardo WAVE and many other software packages. The dynamometer is used for engine mapping and development.

The racing, the motor sports club and our 'open door' policy mean that staff are very approachable. They’re happy to advise on assessment, which includes traditional examinations, formal reports, interviews, presentations and commentaries on portfolios.

You’ll be encouraged to join our Motorsports Club, where you will race Formula Ford race cars and work on an eco-marathon car.

You’ll also be learning from staff who’ve had successful careers in motorsport, aerospace, automotive and rail industries.

This course offers an optional 48-week sandwich placement in industry, between your second and third year. If you’re interested, we’ll help you find and prepare for a placement. Placements are a great way to consolidate your first two years of learning, gain experience, and radically enhance your employability.

Motorsport Club

Motorsport Club provides opportunities to participate in extra-curricular activities that will complement the learning you do as part of the course, and enables the development of additional skills and experience to enhance your employability. Initially the activities may be quite structured, such as the strip and build of a go-kart and the sessions relating to race car preparation and setting up the suspension geometry.

As your competence and confidence grows you may become a part of our successful Formula Ford team, helping to prepare and run the car at race events for our customer drivers. Typically this culminates in the Autumn with the Walter Heyes Trophy event at Silverstone, the world’s largest Formula Ford event. Or maybe you will support our Formula Student project and help prepare the vehicle for test events, or by getting involved in the build of the latest car.

We also have two racing simulators in the Motorsports Lab that you can use to put your knowledge of race car suspension set-up, and driving skills, to the test. These have data logging features to allow comparison of your driving to other students so you can analyse where and how improvements to lap times might be achieved.

Formula Student Vehicle Design Project

During the course you’ll develop and increasingly integrate the subject matter around the processes required for successful innovative and sensible technical design and manufacture.

In your final year this culminates in the Formula Student team project, a significant part of the course.

The Formula Student competition is renowned as a testing ground for the next generation of world-class engineers, and you’ll design and manufacture, with other students, almost the entire car in-house.

In a recent example a carbon-fibre tub was developed using our CNC router, the engine was tuned on our engine dynamometers, the structural integrity of the sub-frame was assessed in our materials testing laboratory, and our waterjet cutter was working overtime to machine numerous components such as the rear wishbones.