Competing against 61 other universities, UGRacing with UGR22 – the team’s last combustion vehicle entry, won Formula Student UK 2022 overall, becoming the first Scottish team and third UK team ever to do so. With twists and turns from the first day of scutineering, all the way to the final lap of the endurance event on Sunday, countless years of hard-work has lead the team to securing our place as one of the top teams in Formula Student UK history.

Across four days of sunshine and tough competition, the team placed first overall in the dynamic events category, with first, second, third and fourth in the sprint, skid pad, endurance and acceleration events respectively. A strong performance in the static events saw the team reach the final for the second straight year in the design event, coupled with an eighth-place finish in the cost and manufacturing event – a personal best in recent years.

The competition also saw our driverless team build on its impressive debut competition in 2021. After a challenging start, the team overcame some unexpected hardware issues to complete the acceleration event and gain our first dynamic points at the competition – achieving 8th position overall!

As a final farewell to the Glasgow team’s combustion era, the team cannot thank all our sponsors, university staff and team members, past and present enough, who made this incredible opportunity possible. For 2023, the team now has its full focus on our electric vehicle entry and furthering our driverless development, where we will be looking to design and manufacture the team’s first actuation systems, working towards our long-term goal of a fully driverless vehicle in the future.

UGRacing’s 2019 season was one of the most exciting in their
history. Strong off the back of their 2018 competition, the team were aiming to better than ever before. The team performed well from day one, once again being first into scrutineering and ended up being only one of three teams with four scrutineering passes at the end of the first day.

Taking a 3rd place in the Business event and our first ever win in an FSUK event in the Communications award cemented a strong start to the week. Ending up in the top 5 for the Sprint event and competing in the Acceleration event final were additional highlights. Unfortunately history seems to have a habit of repeating itself and on the final lap of Endurance UGR-19 lost power. This was due to an overly-sensitive inertia switch, a safety device required by the rules, and cost us 8 places in the final rankings with us finishing 12th out of 81 teams. Despite this bittersweet ending, the car performed exceptionally all weekend and has provided even more determination within the team to come back stronger next year!

2020 will mark some even bigger changes to UGR’s Formula Student entry. The first appearance of a full aero package will be the most obvious change, but there are plenty of exciting updates to come soon. As always, the team is extremely grateful to their partners who support this project year in, year out.

Once again UGRacing have smashed team records and had their most successful year at Formula Student UK. With everyone focused on avoiding a repeat of 2017’s endurance event, the competition saw several huge team successes: being the first team into scrutineering, completing scrutineering by 1pm on the second day of the event, winning second place in both the Business and Communications awards (our first ever UK podiums) and completing all of the dynamic events for the first time in the team’s history. These individual successes combined to cause us to finish in 11th place overall, 6th in the UK and most importantly, first in Scotland!

UGR-18 attracted a huge amount of attention at the event, with her distinctive bodywork and unprecedented performance in the dynamic events. The team wowed onlookers after the final scrutineering with a procession back to the pits led by our very own piper and even made an appearance on BBC News.

2018’s results have spurred the team on to do even better next year and everyone is more committed than ever before. With design work for UGR-19 having started in February 2018, we are well on our way to producing the next Scottish Champion car. The feedback from the judges has allowed the team to focus in on areas for improvement and we will be implementing some significant changes this year: notably the change from 13″ to 10″ wheels.

As always, these results wouldn’t have been possible without our dedicated partners and we are looking forward to working closely with every one of them again this coming year to push the technical capabilities of the team to the limit. If you would be interested in being a part of the team’s future then please do get in touch!

UGRacing have achieved their greatest ever finish in the team’s history at this year’s Formula Student UK competition. Despite running out of fuel on the final lap of the endurance race (something we will be getting sorted with our good friend Chris Forbes at DynaTune) UGR still managed to come in 21st, which could have easily been top 10 had that last lap been completed. The car proved to be incredibly competitive, being 12th quickest in the acceleration event and overtaking numerous cars in the endurance event with budgets far exceeding ours.

Nonetheless, 2017 was a supremely useful as a learning process. The feedback from the judges has provided the team with new motivation for the development of UGR-18. This should ensure that UGR-18 is more competitive whilst also allowing UGR-17 to be used for driver practice and publicity events, meaning both the car and driver are the best-prepared for a competition that they have ever been.

The support from our partners has been invaluable for our successes in the 2017 competition and as the team moves into the new year, we are looking for partners to support the 2018 car. As such, should prospective partners have an interest in being involved, please do not hesitate to contact us with the details provided in the relevant section of the website.

Unfortunately, the car suffered a critical ECU failure during initial fire up at Formula Student 2016 which kept us from running in any of the events. After Silverstone the car was taken back to Glasgow for repair, however the damage was too severe to repair in time for Formula Student Italy.

Needless to say, the team were disappointed, but have taken many positives away from the experience. We now look forward to the new regulations coming into force for the 2017 competition.

UGR secured it’s best ever results at Formula Student 2015, finishing 51st out of 97 competing entrants. The 2015 team was one of our youngest in history, comprising of mostly 2nd & 3rd year engineering students. For the majority of the team Formula Student 2015 was their first taste of competition, and everyone was eager to perform well at Silverstone.

The competition started well for the team. UGR-15 made the pre-scrutineering checklist, and was with the judges by midday on the first day. With a few minor changes to make, the team comfortably passed the first four stages of srutineering. The first big hurdle came at the Noise test. On a very hot day when everything had been going so well, the decibel noise level coming from the exhaust was too high for the Silverstone marshal’s liking. The Electronics team got to work on an attempt to bring down the idling RPM, and after a few hours of trial and error along with a few hardware modifications, the car passed the fifth stage of scrutineering.

A jubilant team rushed the car to the final scrutineering test, knowing passing here would get us on track immediately for all the events. Unfortunately joy quickly turned to despair as our front left brake disc failed, wrecking havoc in the whole assembly. With no replacement part and a broken caliper, Formula Student 2015 appeared to be over for UGR. However in a stroke of luck, the team were approached by Kazbro, a machining company based out of London who were willing to manufacture us four new brake discs overnight, to be ready in time for the final Endurance event on Sunday afternoon.

While the drama in scrutineering was ongoing, the team put in strong performances in the static events, particularly the business presentation. A huge amount of experience was gained by the team in the static events this year, and we hope to improve our results even further in 2016.

With the new brake discs arriving Sunday morning, the team rushed to pass the final few stages of scrutineering and head onto track for Endurance. A huge downpour before our timeslot brought out the wet tyres, and soon after Calum MacDonald was away in UGR-15 on track. The car lasted 6 laps, before being pulled in for an oil leak, not a big problem at all, but unfortunately resulted in a lot of smoke coming out the back! Nevertheless, the team had recovered superbly to be able to race less than 24 hours after our disc failure.

UGR was invited to take part in the inaugural Russian Formula Student event in Moscow. With the short notice, logistically it would have been impossible to move the car to Russia in time, so UGR entered as a Class 3 entry (confusingly called Class 2 at other events). As the inaugural event, the number of teams was slightly smaller than usual, boosting our chances of winning our first ever trophy.

And winning trophies we did. Four of them to be precise (and a go pro)! The team dominated the Class 3 event, winning 2/3 events, finishing second in the other, and scooping the overall winners trophy too. The Russian event was a fantastic cultural and engineering experience for our three team members, and we are hoping to return next year with a full car to try to repeat the performance!

With the main team unable to field a car at the event, our newest recruits travelled down to Silverstone to contest the Class 2 event. For all of the team, this was their first year with UGR, and therefore their first ever competition. Not really knowing what to expect, the team arrived at the circuit just in time to hear the opening talk given by Paddy Lowe.

All the class 2 events were scheduled for Thursday. An early start allowed the team to set up their booth, patiently waiting for the design judges to arrive. After all the build up, the design and cost events went by in a flash. The team packed up the booth then went through some final preparation for the business event later that afternoon. Once out the way, there was a lot more of a relaxed feeling around the team, and now just had the nervous wait for results.

Over the next few days the team wondered the pits gaining as much information as possible and taking on any advice other teams had. Much was learnt by the team, with most members saying the best knowledge was gained by actually going and talking to people about their personal experiences with Formula Student.

Our class 2 team finished 12th overall out of 27 entrants, a fantastic effort by a team made out of newcomers. We look to use everything we learnt from the experience to help the car build next year and return to Silverstone in 2015 looking to put in a decent performance.

Formula Student 2013 got off to a shaky start for the team after an engine failure three days before the competition dashed our hopes of competing in the event. With no spare engine to replace the failed one, the decision was made to put a smaller, less powerful engine in the car with the hopes of simply getting the car rolling. This proved fruitless however, with a rethink required to fit a new Powertrain in a chassis and Drivetrain that has not been designed for such.

UGRacing still competed in the static events at Silverstone, but the lack of sleep, and a running car severly dented our chances of scoring highly in the Business and Design presentations. The team can take some positives away from the unfortunate 2013 season though. Pat Clarke, one of the most highly respected Formula Student judges worldwide was incredibly impressed with devotion of our team members and left a message on our car saying “Fantastic recovery & Best of luck next year”. The team learnt a lot from the competition despite not competing in all events, and hope to apply this knowledge next year to improve our scores.

2013 was the first year that UGRacing has sent a Class 2 team to Silverstone, and they performed fantastically over the weekend. Having had little practice in giving such presentations, the team impressed with their design, and costings, whilst helping Class 1, and checking out their rest of the grid in their free time. All Class 2 members that attended Silverstone have joined Class 1 for the 2014 season, with some great experience under their belts.