Mobil 1 Sussex Racing struggled with the initial scrutineering events due to some structural issues with the seat belt’s position. However, they completed ALL of the dynamic events and came 22nd overall. The highest positions Sussex Racing has seen since it’s beginnings.

Mobil 1 Sussex Racing struggled at Silverstone due to a persistent braking issue that refused to go away, meaning they were unable to compete in any of the Dynamic events.  Despite the struggles they faced with the Dynamic events, the team competed strongly in all Static events, and thanks to achieving a Mobil 1 Sussex Racing best ever result of 39th in the Design report, managed to finish higher overall than 2016.

Finally finishing 23rd out of the UK and 40th in the world.

Mobil 1 Sussex Racing roared into success with only an 11 strong Class 1 team coming home for the first time from Silverstone with silverware. Winning the Business Presentation event after representing in the final against 5 other Universities. Successfully completing all Static and Dynamic events despite a failure within the Drivetrain during the Sprint on Saturday. Managing to nurse the car around the Endurance on the Sunday.

Finally finishing 9th out of the UK and 43rd in the world.

Mobil 1 Team Sussex roared into 9th place in the UK and came 28th out of the 135 competing teams from across the globe, surpassing not only the University’s previous record but also the expectations of the students themselves.

Automotive Engineering student Martin Law, the team’s head of commercial development, said: “This year’s place in the competition has been a massive improvement. In fact, we have exceeded our initial goal of coming in the top 35.

“I am truly thrilled about the result, and more importantly I’m proud to be part of the team that broke the University’s record. I hope we will inspire future Sussex teams taking part in the competition.”

The Vice-Chancellor, Professor Michael Farthing, was present to cheer the team on as they competed at the Silverstone race track in Northamptonshire last week (9-11 July).

Also in attendance was the internationally acclaimed artist María Inés Aguirre (also known as Mia), who had produced a vibrant abstract painting that was transferred onto the students’ car by researchers at Sussex, adding a blaze of colour to the vehicle as it zoomed around the track.

2014 saw over 115 teams registered to compete at Silverstone for the Formula Student competition. This year we developed significantly in the powertrain area of the car: with brand new Honda CBR600RR engines, a 3D printed air intake system and a custom made Quaife differential and driveshafts. This combined with a built-in launch control system led to a top 25 finish in the acceleration event.

After two successive years of not completing in 3 out of 4 dynamic events, the team decided to go back to basics and build a reliable car. The philosophy behind this was “evolution, not revolution” and so we decided to keep the fundamental framework of the car very similar to SR-13. This made the design process a lot faster, meaning we had time to properly test the car before the competition. This also gave us more time to focus on the static events, and our 29th place finish in the business presentation was our best as a team so far.

We managed to pass scrutineering before the Saturday morning, meaning we were able to compete in all dynamic events at the competition. Our improved powertrain package helped us to achieve a team best of 4.5 seconds in the acceleration event; placing us in 24th position overall. With contributions also made in the skid pad and sprint events, we were well placed Sunday morning to try to acheive a good time in the endurance. Unfortunately we ended up hitting a wall on the first lap of the endurance, ruling us out of the rest of the competition.

This meant we were only to improve two places on SR-13’s 65th place finish, however with contributions in all 4 dynamic events and competitive times set, this year was a step in the right direction for Team Sussex.

2013 was a chance to reestablish the success  SR-11 achieved. There were significant advancements made to the suspension system and bodywork. However, during the brake test at the event, a wishbone buckled, resulting in once again missing the first three events. Although, in the 22nd lap endurance event we managed to finish 14th out of ~90 teams (our highest finish as a university in that particular event).

With a whole 4 years behind us; and a mixture of successes and failures, we had all the foundations set to have our most successful year ever. Due to some unforseen circumstances, the project was delayed quite heavily throughout the year; meaning there was a big push and lots of late nights to ensure SR-13 was ready for the competition.

With TS-11 being a success and achieving all the objectives set, we decided to get more creative in 2012 and start to evolve our design. The main objective being to save weight. The aim was to save 30Kg from TS-11, and with an overall weight of 269Kg (compared with 301Kg in 2011) we achieved this.

We also set out to improve our performances in the static events, and with a team best of 23rd in the business presentation, this is evident.

Due to a wheel bearing failure at the competition, we only managed to participate in the final dynamic event (Endurance); depriving us of what would have undoubtedly been an improved result from 2011.

With two years of experience behind us, we all knew this was going to be the year where we finally pass the scrutineering phase and are allowed to race. With a few problems occurring during the pre event testing, the memories of 2010 began to resurface; however these were overcome, and we headed to the competition high on confidence.

We managed to pass through scrutineering, and were able to compete in the dynamic events for the first time. This let to an overall finish of 34th.

With a years worth of experience of Formula Student, we had something to work with, immediately putting us in a better position than 2009. The aims remained very much the same: keep the design simple, and try to run in at least one event. This time though, we had a years worth of experience, and a much better idea of what it took to achieve these aims.

We stayed on a good schedule throughout the year, and managed to finish building the car before the competition began. As a result, we had some time for testing before the competition; this led to the unfortunate breaking of a drive shaft, which unfortunately was the end of any chance of us being able to compete in a dynamic event at the competition.

So although vast improvements were made to the team and our car, the result was not too dissimilar from 2009, and we finished 64th overall

As this was the first time we had taken part in the competition; our objective was to keep the design as simple as possible, take a running car to Silverstone, and compete in as many of the dynamic events as possible.

Unfortunately the scrutineering stage of the competition turned out to be more strict than we were expecting; meaning the car failed and was unable to compete in any dynamic events. the points accumulated in the static events were enough to place the team 66th; a result the whole team was very proud of considering it was our first year at the competition.