Team Philosophy
UoP Racing is the Formula Student team of the University of Patras. Founded in 2002, and supported throughout the years by the Laboratory for Manufacturing Systems & Automation, we develop, design and manufacture a racing car that competes at the Formula Student series around the globe, alongside with hundreds of teams from all over the world.
Our team consists of passionate students divided in several modules, with each module having one leader who coordinates all members. Building a racing car in such a small amount of time with limited resources, it takes a lot of time and even more hard work to get the job done. The team only works when all students and their supervisors sacrifice their free time to the project.
Working in the team gives students a great opportunity to gain a lot of experiences and qualifications. The main goal of the team is education. Every year many new students start on a year of Formula Student, most of them have no or very little experience in designing and building a race car; even though, they are allowed and needed to design a part of the car in their first year. Therefore team and each sub-team module are organized at the start of every season to teach the team vital knowledge and skills. Older members of the team will assist the newcomers during the year, assuring the quality of the work and further educating the new engineers. Young engineering students and graduates are exposed to marketing, time management, project management, team building, budgeting, presentation skills, and other management issues. Through Formula Student, they develop experience, skills and professionalism as “hands on” engineers, with a keen awareness of the often competing pressures of performance, cost, safety and reliability. The benefit to students is immense and is good experience for newly qualified engineers preparing to enter a career in motorsport, the automotive Industry or many other areas of high performance engineering. Therefore, most members indicate that their year, or years with the team, was one of the most educating experiences of their studies.
Since 2014 the team operates under a new philosophy of resource efficiency. Design and materials are assessed in order not only to have the best price to performance ratio, but also to be environmentally friendly. This leads to adoption of “out of the box” thinking and the creation of highly innovative ideas, using non-conventional approaches in areas with established technologies and making use of novel manufacturing methods, which (in our opinion) contributes in developing excellent critical thinkers and future engineers, while it captures perfectly the spirit of the FSAE/Formula Student competitions.
Furthermore, we jointly decided as a team to take this new philosophy undertaking to the next level by establishing an active Social Responsibility section. We acknowledge our moral obligation to act for the benefit of society at large.So far in the context of the Formula Student Series the aforementioned responsibility was passive and had the form of educating students into avoiding engaging in socially harmful acts. From now on we are determined to commit to the target of maintaining a balance between motorsport and the ecosystem more actively, through recycling in multiple levels (from scrap metal to depleted battery cells), road safety campaigns and by organizing educational school visits to educate young generations in engineering science under a sustainable and responsible view of motorsports!
Our team consists of passionate students divided in several modules, with each module having one leader who coordinates all members. Building a racing car in such a small amount of time with limited resources, it takes a lot of time and even more hard work to get the job done. The team only works when all students and their supervisors sacrifice their free time to the project.
Working in the team gives students a great opportunity to gain a lot of experiences and qualifications. The main goal of the team is education. Every year many new students start on a year of Formula Student, most of them have no or very little experience in designing and building a race car; even though, they are allowed and needed to design a part of the car in their first year. Therefore team and each sub-team module are organized at the start of every season to teach the team vital knowledge and skills. Older members of the team will assist the newcomers during the year, assuring the quality of the work and further educating the new engineers. Young engineering students and graduates are exposed to marketing, time management, project management, team building, budgeting, presentation skills, and other management issues. Through Formula Student, they develop experience, skills and professionalism as “hands on” engineers, with a keen awareness of the often competing pressures of performance, cost, safety and reliability. The benefit to students is immense and is good experience for newly qualified engineers preparing to enter a career in motorsport, the automotive Industry or many other areas of high performance engineering. Therefore, most members indicate that their year, or years with the team, was one of the most educating experiences of their studies.
Since 2014 the team operates under a new philosophy of resource efficiency. Design and materials are assessed in order not only to have the best price to performance ratio, but also to be environmentally friendly. This leads to adoption of “out of the box” thinking and the creation of highly innovative ideas, using non-conventional approaches in areas with established technologies and making use of novel manufacturing methods, which (in our opinion) contributes in developing excellent critical thinkers and future engineers, while it captures perfectly the spirit of the FSAE/Formula Student competitions.
Furthermore, we jointly decided as a team to take this new philosophy undertaking to the next level by establishing an active Social Responsibility section. We acknowledge our moral obligation to act for the benefit of society at large.So far in the context of the Formula Student Series the aforementioned responsibility was passive and had the form of educating students into avoiding engaging in socially harmful acts. From now on we are determined to commit to the target of maintaining a balance between motorsport and the ecosystem more actively, through recycling in multiple levels (from scrap metal to depleted battery cells), road safety campaigns and by organizing educational school visits to educate young generations in engineering science under a sustainable and responsible view of motorsports!