NU Racing takes home best results in 20-year history

Late last year, NU Racing travelled to Winton Victoria to compete in the Australasian Formula-SAE contest with their student-designed-and-built, 400 V electric race car.

Against nearly 30 national and international entrants, the 2022 group took home the best result in their 20-year history of competition; fourth place overall, and second in the vehicle efficiency category.

This result was enabled by NU Teams, the professional engineering student teams organisation. NU Teams supports the Formula-SAE, Maritime RobotX, and Australian Universities Rocketry Competition teams to design, build and compete in engineering contests.

Director of Student Teams and NU Racing Faculty Advisor, Dr Alexander Gregg, said “NU Racing has made NU Teams, and our university, extraordinarily proud. Their performance is a testament to the hard work of the dozens of engineers who contributed through course- and extracurricular work to the development of EV.Three”.

Meet (some of) the team

Current students Robert and Marissa attended the event as part of the team.

Robert was the 2022 NU Racing Team Leader, and has taken on the role of Chief Engineer this year while completing his final year project (FYP).

Marissa joined NU Racing in 2019, contributing to the development of the team’s first-generation EV and driving in the acceleration event. She has returned in 2023 as Team Leader while completing her FYP.

The competition

“The first day of the competition was dedicated to ensuring the car met all the rules and was safe to compete. We completed all safety checks bar one on the day,” Marissa said.

The final brake-test was only opened on the morning of the second day, where scrutineers saw that NU Racing was the first and only team ready.

The team soon passed this test and were thus the first team to complete the 100+ point technical safety inspection. This alone is a huge achievement – most entering teams don’t pass on their first attempt.

The team was commended by the competition officials for their level of preparedness, spare PCBs, documentation and test specimens.

“The rest of the day involved presenting the designs of the car and justifying all decisions made.

“These presentations included business, cost, and all engineering design choices,” Marissa said.

Day three was the first day of racing. NU Racing was first in line to compete at every event and commentators, other teams, and officials were impressed by the team’s level of preparedness.

“We were regarded as the most prepared team at the competition, being the first to pass each level of the rules inspection and the first to line up in every event,” Robert said.

The first event was 'Acceleration' – the car was started from a standstill and timed across 75 metres.

“The other event of this day was the ‘Skidpad’, which tests multiple elements of the car, mainly including handling and speed,” Marissa said.

Day four included ‘Autocross’ and ‘Endurance’. The goal of Autocross is to drive a lap of the track in the fastest time.

“We completed two laps of Autocross, but on the second lap the car rolled over this finish line due to a technical fault.

“The team got the car off the track and quickly diagnosed the problem. It was a race against time to fix the car and get it ready for the Endurance event,” Marissa said.

With their extensive knowledge of the car – and some impressive teamwork – they were able to fix the problem and charge the car with enough time to complete Endurance.

“The Endurance event tests efficiency of the cars, as they must complete 16 laps – approximately 22 km,” Marissa said.

NU Racing were one of only a handful of teams to finish the gruelling Endurance event, with many teams struggling to manage competing concerns of temperature, charge, vibrations and driver fatigue.

“Many cars did not even make it across the finish line which resulted in their disqualification, but we completed this event!” Marissa said.

NU Racing took the 'slow and steady wins the race' mentality, using conservating power settings and cruising comfortably to the finish.

The team set competitive times in both the Autocross and Skidpad events. Such achievement is the result of the incredible hard work of final year, directed reading and junior students, as well as the NU Teams alumni/mentor network.

Months of work

To even attend the competition took an immeasurable amount of time and energy from the student team.

Robert described 2022 as one of his busiest, tiring, and most rewarding years of university.

“I worked alongside a team of talented individuals who brought this car from nothing, into the car that would achieve the team's best finish ever,” Robert said.

Robert believes that after countless late nights and weekends, highs and lows, their fantastic result made everything worth it.

“The competition was a great reward for everyone with so much time invested in this project to show off what they had achieved and be rewarded with a good result.

“Our team began 2022 as a group of students who had never met each other and we ended up finishing as family,” he said.

NU Racing will be back at the Australasian Formula-SAE competition in 2023 and we look forward to reporting on their continued successes.

Follow their journey