Engineers tackle race car
The University of Auckland’s faculty of engineering Formula SAE team has showcased the race car it designed, constructed and will race next month. Production of the vehicle called the M013 started earlier this year, and one of the largest projects was making the wing elements and endplates from carbon fibre. Everything from the engine to the pedal box had been built by the team, with many Auckland businesses backing the project and the team fundraising at motorsport events. “The M013 has performed admirably throughout on-track testing and is well-placed to achieve the performance goals set at the beginning of the year, as well as being far more robust than last year’s car,” says chief engineer Sam Norton, of Formula SAE, which stands for society of automotive engineers. It’s the 10th Formula SAE race car to be produced at the University of Auckland. In 2011, the team achieved its best finish of fourth place overall. This year the 40-strong team aims to go one step further and earn a podium finish. The concept behind Formula SAE is that a fictional marque has contracted a student design team to develop a small Formula-style car. The prototype is to be evaluated for its potential as a production item. The Universities of Waikato and Canterbury also have teams in the event. It’s Canterbury’s first Formula SAE and mechanical engineering senior lecturer Don Lucas says it has been a huge challenge. “Other universities have been doing this for years and may just have to make modifications to their existing cars, but we’ve started from nothing and have had to come up to speed.”
