YTU Racing Returns Home with Top Honours
YTU Racing, one of the student projects at Yıldız Teknik University, successfully represented Turkey at Formula Student, the world's most prestigious engineering competition, held at England's Silverstone circuit from 8-12 July.
With its second car, coded YTR02, many of whose parts were designed and manufactured by the students, the team passed five demanding tests. It crowned its performance by winning the "Most Effective Media and Communication Award", finishing first among 135 universities from 28 countries, and returned to Turkey with the trophy...
YTU Racing was founded in 2011 by students of the Yıldız Teknik University Mechanical Technologies Club. Its aim is to take part in Formula Student, the world's largest and most prestigious inter-university engineering competition, which is held in various countries, and to train the capable, versatile and articulate engineers of the future.
Bringing together different disciplines, the team consists of 21 undergraduate students (16 from mechanical engineering, three from industrial engineering, one from electrical engineering and one from materials engineering) and two academic advisers. Working for a full year, it designs and builds a single-seater, open-wheel formula car, which is the concept of the Formula Student competition.
Under the competition concept, a team of university students designs, builds and tests a single-seater formula-type racing car within a year, in line with rules set each year. At the event, they present the car to the scrutineering judges and take part in a variety of performance tests. Alongside the car, the students also present its cost analysis, market analysis, sales forecasts, company management and organisational structure to a panel of judges, just as a company would.
The competition gives students the chance to put the theoretical education they receive at university into practice, while weighing cost, manufacturability, sustainability and performance criteria together in their designs. In this way, even before graduating, they learn to design with cost, the central criterion in the real engineering world, in mind, and get the chance to bring those designs to life. In engineering terms, they develop their technical foundations by working on mechanical design, analysis, simulation, vehicle dynamics, R&D, manufacturing and production methods, testing and documentation. Formula Student also offers unique experience in areas such as time management, project management, costing and marketing, with teamwork above all.
At Formula Student UK in July 2012, entering as a Class 2 team, YTU Racing achieved a major success by finishing sixth in the cost event among many teams. In the following years the team successfully built its first formula car, the YTR01, Yıldız Teknik University's first formula car, and entered it in Formula Student UK 2014 in July. It returned to Turkey with positive feedback from the scrutineering judges and valuable competition experience, and in August began work for 2015 with a newly formed team. Many parts were designed and manufactured by the students, and through extensive R&D, carbon fibre components were produced and the car's weight was reduced significantly. Setting out under the motto "Competitive and domestic engineering", the team took part in Formula Student UK from 8-12 July this year. In a competition featuring 135 universities from 28 countries, the team successfully passed five static scrutineering tests.
YTU Racing was also a guest at the awards ceremony on the final day of the competition. The team capped its technical success with the "Most Effective Media and Communication Award", given to the team that promotes itself and the competition best and reaches the most people, and so brought Turkey its first trophy in this field. With the support it has received and will receive, YTU Racing will keep moving step by step towards the level of the best teams in Formula Student.
