LJMU e-Racing Team Launch Evening a success

The team is a group of talented students who work together to build a single-seater racing car which then competes with other student-built cars at Formula Student events around the world. Engineering students help design, build and race the car, but there are also key roles for students from other degree programmes, such as marketing, business and media.

It’s a big year for the team as they are planning to design, build and race the first Formula Student electric car from Liverpool. With the future of the automotive industry heading towards battery powered cars, the team believe it is important to aspire to the same goal, while maintaining a professional standard.

After an influx of new team members and a rebranding of the team image - plus a new name, LJMU e-Racing Team - the students are hoping to build upon their previous accolades. The team’s first car, LJMU 2010, successfully made it into a Class 1 competition, helping them grab the record for the best performing newly established team. Since then successive teams have garnered extensive experience so its not surprising that Mechanical Engineering student and LJMU e-Racing Team Manager, Aziz Makkan, has high hopes for what his crew can achieve this year.

"I oversee the day-to-day operations of the Team and liaise with faculty within the University," he explains. "I believe knowledge transfer is key within our Formula Student team. After all, it’s the junior Team members that will be running the show in the future. We need to ensure that the senior members, who have advanced technical ability and experience of competition, work closely with new members so that they may develop."

Aziz continues:

"We have had plenty of success at competitions in the past with our internal combustion cars, aided by the generosity of our sponsors. Now, we hope to carry this racing pedigree over to our future electric cars. The LJMU e-Racing Team have the honour of being one the few UK-based teams to be competing at Formula Student with an electric car.

"On a personal note, Formula Student is a golden opportunity to take everything I’ve learnt in the class room and apply it first-hand onto a race car, something I never even dreamt of doing. In terms of job hunting after university, developing an electric car means I’ll be graduating with the perfect skill set to apply for jobs within an industry which is evolving around electric power."

The team are planning to enter their car design into the Class 2 entry of Formula Student UK 2018, and then construct and enter their car into a Class 1 entry in 2019.