Inside Oxford Brookes University's Elite Formula Student Team

At the Oxford Brookes Headington campus, a group of over 100 students are working tirelessly to build the fastest and best-designed race car possible for this year’s Formula Student competition.

The Oxford Brookes Racing (OBR) team, the UK’s most prestigious Formula Student team, has won more design awards than any other UK university and frequently secures top spots in the international race held annually at Silverstone.

Success in the competition is crucial as it gets the team noticed by the industry, where a handful of engineering jobs can have upwards of 10,000 applicants. Several OBR alumni are currently working in every Formula One team.

“A lot of the coverage on TV is based around the drivers, but not really the actual engineers,” said Thomas Cawdery, a team manager and third-year motorsports technology student. “This is what you don’t see in Formula One. The engineers who make it happen.”

The OBR team is entirely run by students and operates out of two buildings, where scores of people are working hard – cutting and shaping carbon fibre chassis by hand, and running simulations on computers. Students of all ages are teaching and learning from one another.

While actual Formula One cars have much more power than the students are allowed for safety reasons, the complexity of the cars is very similar. “They’re the same if not more complex than Formula One cars,” Cawdery said.

The OBR team surpasses industry expectations in some aspects, particularly in terms of gender balance. Unlike most Formula One teams, where only about 10% of engineers are women, OBR has a much better gender balance.

Emma Deery, a first-year mechanical engineering student, finds the inclusive environment encouraging. “In the industry, a lot of women find themselves the only woman on their team. Here it’s different. We have a lot more women and a lot of women in leadership roles.”

The OBR team will compete for the top spot this summer against 102 other teams from 27 countries. The competition is a useful recruitment tool for big industry names, as it showcases innovative engineering skills.

Ross Brawn, the legendary former team principal, once said, “There are two really innovative forms of motorsport left. One of them is Formula One and the other one is Formula Student.”