Team Bath Racing Electric is preparing for a new season of Formula Student this summer and is set to compete at the most competitions in the team’s history.
The student team, known as TBRe, will compete and race a car they’ve designed and built at four Formula Student events in the UK and around Europe this summer.
Aiming to win their home event of Formula Student UK (FSUK) at Silverstone in July, the team is also targeting top 10 positions at FS events in Italy, Portugal and Spain. Previously, TBRe has competed at international competitions, but never as many as four in a single year.
TBRe has been the UK’s top-scoring electric vehicle team in Formula Student since 2017. The TBRe AI sub-team, which develops a driverless racing car each year alongside the main TBRe effort, also scored category wins in 2021 and 2022.
With a total of 95 members, the team is comprised of students studying a variety of engineering subjects including Mechanical, Automotive, Aerospace and Robotics Engineering, as well as other taking course ranging from Business Administration, Management, and Marketing to Astrophysics.
The team has secured an impressive lineup of sponsors for this season - Mewburn Ellis is their title sponsor while others include MPC DesignWorks, Multimatic and AB Dynamics. Members also carried out crowdfunding to support the cost of international travel for the team to attend all intended competitions.
James Macrae, TBRe Team Principal, says: “We faced some great challenges at the start of this racing season, ranging from budget cuts driven by the energy crisis, to the loss of many of our lead team members who graduated last season. Fortunately, we have successfully navigated these trials to transform our engineering designs into a high-performance race car, which we can’t wait to race against the top STEM universities from across the world.
“We’re a highly motivated team and very excited to be competing across four international Formula Student competitions this summer. We aim to hold onto the ranking of the UK’s number one EV team and even win Formula Student UK at Silverstone.”
Formula Student sees teams from universities compete across a range of events including on-track tests alongside business, design and engineering assessments.
Last year, TBRe developed a rapid car that would have broken FSUK acceleration records, but reliability issues prevented the team from competing in all the Silverstone races. This year, the team has worked to improve reliability across the board, while retaining the powertrain from 2022’s car within a newly designed and lighter spaceframe chassis.
Key engineering advances this year include a new suspension system that will allow the car to be tailored to each track it competes on. The team has also advanced its aerodynamic package by carrying out a detailed validation, simulation and testing process to improve the car’s performance.
Companies that could provide partnership, sponsorship or other support to TBRe are invited to contact the team at rpb29@bath.ac.uk. The team's crowdfunding page is located at: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/team-bath-racing-electric-2023
The team will reveal the 2023 TBRe car at a launch event in early July.