Formula SAE-Australasia returns to the fold this weekend as thousands of University students head to Winton Motor Raceway for the annual competition.
One of the biggest student-based competitions in the world, the Formula SAE-A event is 12 months in the making with students designing, building and developing a vehicle before they put them to the ultimate test through motorkhana style challenges.
In previous years, teams have had the opportunity to enter two major categories, Combustion and Electric Cars, and this year, a brand new category has been introduced – Autonomous.
While the teams will be busy all perfecting and seeing their cars go through a set of rigorous testing on and off the track, there will also be a number of opportunities for them to help their future ambitions with a careers and networking expo also taking place.
Now that both electric and autonomous categories are available to students and the former fast becoming one of the bigger industries in the automotive industry, event organiser Nadine Lawrence was excited for the future of SAE-A and this year’s event in particular.
“Everything on our end is prepared and we’re looking forward to what should be a fantastic weekend,” Lawrence said.
“Formula SAE-A reaches its 20th year this weekend and we have the most entries for any event in the history, which shows we’re on the right pathway. We’re getting a lot of attention for our events, which is great.
“There may be some issues within the Australian automotive industry at the moment, but as far as SAE-A is concerned, we’re definitely more popular than ever before, so I think the industry is just shifting into a different direction and our students are at the forefront of that.
“We will have our first automated entry this year which is really exciting. Everything is set for a really good weekend, especially with all the activations happening within the weekend.”
As one of the biggest SAE events in the world, the Australasia meeting attracts teams across the whole world with the Universities from UK, Germany, India, Japan, New Zealand and USA among the entries.
In recent years, Monash Motorsport have had a stronghold over the competition, winning last year’s combustion vehicle competition, while German outfit Tu Munich were the pick of the electric cars last year.
However as always, teams will be looking for the extra edge over their rival students and Melbourne University’s Chief Electrical Engineer Gabriel Varveri is a massive supporter of the program and hopeful their electric car can get a result.
“SAE-A is by far the best thing I have done at Uni. It’s an amazing community that we get to work with and for me, building a race car has always a dream. Being able to do that was fantastic,” Varveri said.
“Also being able to work on electric cars which I believe are the future and using cutting edge technology is really exciting.
“Some of the stuff we are doing and the technology we are implementing aren’t even being used by major companies yet, so it’s really exciting. A lot of the technology that SAE teams use now often gets moved onto big companies which is a testament to the quality of our research in these new areas.
“A good portion of the people involved in the program have an ambition to work in motor sport so it’s this weekend offers the opportunity to prove themselves. It’s a way to break into the industry and we use this weekend as way to showcase our skills.
“I’m really happy with our car so far. Didn’t get as much test as we hoped but it looks really good and it’s running quite strong. Really excited to get out there this and see what we can do.”
The Formula SAE-A event takes place at Winton Motor Raceway on 5-9 December.