Formula NUST Racing – Are you up for the Challenge?

Have you ever felt your pulse quicken watching F1 cars zoom through tricky circuits at unholy speeds? Pondered over the sorcery behind their mind-boggling performance? Wondered what magic goes into the making of these majestic machines? Than boy have we got news for you: A Pakistani team from NUST-PNEC is working hard to make just such a car! A F1 beauty designed specifically for the tracks of Silverstone, UK to participate in the Formula Student international racing event.

The Formula Student races are arranged all over the world under the Patronage of American Society of Automotive Engineers. From Japan to Australia to Germany, there isn’t a continent in the world (with sufficient human habitation) that doesn’t host Formula Student.

So what is the concept behind Formula Student? Well, in the simplest possible sense, it’s a sporting event in which University students design a Formula styled car as if they were hired by an actual Automotive Company, a car built for weekend auto-cross racers. Except it’s a kind of competition where you end up spending countless hours – not to mention an unimaginably huge pile of money – to compete against the best Engineering institutions from all over the world. That is the real attraction: The fact that the Silverstone Formula Student event is probably the largest gathering of the brightest Engineering minds, University students coming from a diversified range of ethnical and national backgrounds representing over a hundred nations, competing against each other for the highest honour and undying glory.

So is it the first time we are participating in the event? The answer is: No. Formula NUST Racing is a legacy of Formula NUST, the first ever team to represent Pakistan in a FSAE event. Though they couldn’t make it to the dynamic events due to some technical glitches in their car, they still won laurels in the Silverstone race for being impressive first timers. And after comparing them to an Indian team that was at the event for the fourth time but was still nowhere close to driving on the race track, you realize that what the Formula NUST team, constituting of only seven members and a couple of volunteers, achieved was nothing less than extraordinary. It’s worth mentioning here that Formula Student teams usually constitute of more than 30 members divided in specialized groups which look after specific aspects of the project from marketing to finances to management and off-course technical aspects. So for a Pakistani team, with only 7 members, building a Formula-Styled race car, taking it all the way to England seemed more like a mission impossible. But they persevered and, against all odds, achieved just that.

Panning back to the present, Formula NUST has now evolved into Formula NUST Racing with a larger team and a more versatile skill set. The team has now a technical division, hands greased and dirty and minds filled with complex formulas; a marketing division, all suited up trying hard to get the word around and making sure that the sponsorship money keeps trickling in; and a management division that ensures that the ceiling fans are in working condition and that every single nut and every single bolt of the car is accounted for. So, with hearts thumping with passion and minds beaming with ambitious ideas, these guys are hard at work, inching towards their ultimate goal: creating a machine of epic beauty that is worthy of bearing Pakistan’s Crescent and Star on the world stage. Will they succeed? Well that’s anyone’s guess, but one thing is for sure, no matter what they do, they will make Pakistan proud!