Team Bath Racing Electric, a race team made up of University of Bath students, has launched its new 2024 racing car.
The team took the covers off the ‘TBRe24’ model at a special event at Rotork House, headquarters of their title sponsor, in Bath on Thursday 11 July.
TBRe will compete at Formula Student events in the UK, Portugal and – for the first time ever – Germany this summer.
Featuring a full carbon-fibre monocoque chassis, manufactured almost entirely in-house at the University, the TBRe24 has given the team new opportunities to learn and gain experience in cutting-edge design, engineering and manufacturing.
Team Principal Alexandra Sharankova said: “This year has seen a big leap forward for TBRe technically and as a team. The road has not been completely smooth - we have faced many challenges - but we have come together to make this possible. We are hoping to validate everyone's efforts and bring back trophies from the events we’re competing in over the summer.
“None of this would not have been possible without the support of the University of Bath, our sponsors, who have been generous both in terms of donations and in-kind support, as well as the team's friends and family, and the local Bath community.”
The team is aiming to win Formula Student UK at Silverstone, and place in the top 10 in the two European events.
Since its inception in 2015, TBRe has consistently been one of the UK’s top Formula Student (FS) teams.
This year, a new strategy was adopted to integrate development of upcoming cars into students’ penultimate-year engineering projects. This has extended the design cycle from nine to 18 months, with the goal of creating more fully realised, rounded cars.
While TBRe is attached to the University’s Faculty of Engineering & Design, with the majority of its 90 team members studying for degrees including Mechanical, Electronic & Electrical, Aerospace and Automotive Engineering, many others are drawn from across the University, studying courses including Astrophysics, Business Administration, Management and Marketing.
The team has a partnership with Red Bull and its sponsors include Rotork, Mewburn Ellis, Vector, Zuken, MPC DesignWorks, AB Dynamics, Babcock, Multimatic, Cross, Newbury Electronics, Pro Carve, Brunner, Frewer, Ansys, Renishaw, 3DConnexion, Creat3d, Altium, Easy Composites, Accu, Rapid Harness, TeXtreme and Get It Made, which provided some of the CNC machined parts for the car.
Formula Student is Europe’s most established educational engineering competition. It aims to develop young engineers and encourage more young people to take up a career in engineering. The format provides an ideal opportunity for students to demonstrate their engineering knowledge and test and improve their capabilities to deliver a complex and integrated product in the demanding environment of a motorsport competition.
Previous members of TBRe and Bath’s other student engineering teams now work for top-tier automotive manufacturers, Formula 1 teams and world-leading engineering companies. Bryan Bozzi, an alumnus of Team Bath Racing, became Race Engineer for Ferrari F1 driver Charles LeClerc earlier this year.