We are proud to announce that Michael J Lonsdale will be sponsoring Team Bath Racing for the 2022 Formula Student season. The sponsorship follows our commitment to finding and growing the engineering talent of the next generation. Our support will enable the team to expand their portfolio of engines and engine ancillaries, allowing them to expand their testing capabilities beyond any team before.
The following information gives you an insight into what Formula Student is and, more importantly, who Team Bath Racing is.
What is Formula Student?
Formula Student is an international design competition, with 1222 different teams from 64 countries. Teams are challenged to build a single-seater race car to compete in 4 separate dynamic events, each testing the performance of the cars. The most gruelling event the team faces is a 22km endurance event. Teams are also tested on their engineering knowledge in 3 static events: design, cost and business.
Who is Team Bath Racing?
Team Bath Racing (TBR) is The University of Bath’s Combustion Formula Student team. TBR is one of the UK’s leading Formula Student teams, having competed at the highest level in events all over the world since the team’s inception in 2000. Our greatest achievements include an outright victory at FS Czech in 2016 (a first for a UK team), and the virtual FSUK competition 2020, placing 3rd at FS Austria in 2018. The teams also achieved the highest-ranked UK team in 2015 and 2016. As for TBR22, we have already achieved 2nd place at FSUK21’s concept class event and are working to continue this success going into next year’s competition.
Team performance last season
With COVID restrictions in place, the fact that Team Bath Racing managed to even build TBR21 was a triumph. Lots of teams settled on bringing an old car to the competition, but we stuck to our roots of building a truly new race car every year for the past 21 years. We believe this ensures we learn as much as we possibly can from the project, making us better engineers.
At FSUK, we had great success in both the static events and scrutineering, with comments like “the best car I’ve scrutineered in years” and “I’m annoyed I can’t find anything wrong with it”. However, as the weekend and dynamic events drew closer, a cascade of electronic issues tripped us as we approached the final hurdle. The final days of the competition pushed the team to its limit, working from 7am to 11pm. Our car attempted the sprint event 3 out of the 4 possible times. Each time a different electronic issue would cut us short. Our car showed great pace in the laps we attempted and gave us confidence that we could be competitive if we could fix the electronics.
The team worked tirelessly to fix the issues and managed to get the car to the start line of the final event with only 1 minute to spare. The car pulled away from the start line and was met with roars from the spectators as it completed its first lap. We posted a lap time of 63 seconds, only 5 seconds off the fastest lap set, despite the car downshifting into neutral without the driver’s command. The electrical gremlins would sadly strike again stopping the car half a lap later.
Plans for 2022
In the upcoming season, we will be competing at Silverstone for the Formula Student UK competition. We are also planning on competing in two further European competitions after two years away from Europe due to COVID.
