There was a lot of drama on the famous Silverstone Formula 1 race circuit in England when 26 students from University of Southern Denmark participated in the so-called Formula Student competition with their own racing car.
The level of activity was frenzied the days leading up to the big day when the hopeful students were off to England. Everybody worked round the clock to finish the car and fine-tune both the engineering work and the design.
The team, who calls themselves the SDU-Vikings Racing Team, consists of both engineering students and students from the Faculty of Social Sciences. In the past year, they have worked hard at getting the racing car ready for the Formula Student competition where universities from all over the world compete about who has the best-built racing car – judged on various factors such as speed, design, functionality, marketing and economics.
Nerve-racking race ’We would actually have finished as number 36 if we had completed the Endurance competition of 22 km, but we “only” made it to 21.98 km! The car literally ran out of petrol on the finishing line, which of course caused wild cheers from the audience’, says Professor Jesper Tønnesen and continues: ‘I don’t think anyone has ever been that close to completing the Endurance competition just to run out of petrol on the finishing line!’
The reason was that the petrol tank had been shortened approx. 10 mm more than calculated to make room for a pressure vessel – and that was why the car ran out of petrol.
Impressive result
Instead the team finished as number 55 of 72 authorised teams – a result that Jesper Tønnesen and the rest of the team is content with, because SDU-Vikings Racing Team competed against teams from several universities who have spent years developing and rebuilding their racing cars. For the Danish team, on the other hand, it was their first time and the result was celebrated.
Even better next year
Now the racing car is parked at the RoboLab at the Faculty of Engineering – waiting for semester start and a new team of students to set about the development work for next year’s competition.
Read more about
SDU-Vikings Racing Team and see photo from
Silverstone For further information, please contact:
Communications Officer
Mette Christina Lund-Jensen Tel. +45 6550 7448
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