Overview
UWE Formula Student is a student led team at the University of the West of England, bringing together students from a range of engineering and non-engineering disciplines to design, manufacture and race a single-seater Formula Student car.
For the 2026 season, the team developed UWEFS-13, the thirteenth car in the team's history. The car uses a 675 cc Triumph Street Triple three-cylinder engine, combined with two independently controlled in-hub electric motors driving the front wheels.
A major focus for this season was improving reliability while continuing to increase performance. Rather than designing the most complex car possible, the team focused on developing a car that could be built early, tested thoroughly and reliably complete the competition events.
Car Development and Testing
The development of UWEFS-13 began with lessons learnt from the previous car, UWEFS-12. Where possible, new concepts were prototyped and tested on the previous vehicle before being committed to the new design.
Simulation played a major role in this process. Lap simulation was used to compare powertrain options and understand the effect of aerodynamic and vehicle dynamics changes on overall competition performance.
The aerodynamic package was developed using CFD, with the simulations predicting a significant increase in downforce. Physical testing using wool tufts and slow motion video was then used to compare the predicted airflow with the real car.
The suspension was developed using lessons learnt from UWEFS-12, with a focus on improving the car’s handling and maintaining a consistent platform. The team used simulation to optimise the suspension geometry and understand how the car would behave under braking, acceleration and cornering. Driver feedback and testing of components on the previous car were also used to refine the design, helping to improve drivability while keeping the system practical to manufacture and set up at competition.
Driver feedback was another important part of development. Steering and pedal box changes were first tested on UWEFS-12, allowing the team to improve driver confidence and consistency before manufacturing UWEFS-13.
Reliability and Manufacturing
Reliability was one of the biggest priorities for the 2026 car.
The wiring harness is the central nervous system of the car; if it fails, the car fails. Last year's harness showed us the cost of treating it as an afterthought. Ground loops, signal integrity issues and limited flexibility for servicing hampered testing of our previous car at the start of the year.
As a result, the wiring harness became the focus of our RS Build Fund. The funding allowed us to invest in the connectors, contacts, splices, heat shrink, braided sleeving and other components required to produce a significantly improved harness.
The new harness was designed not only to improve electrical reliability, but also to make the car easier to work on. Components can be removed and serviced more easily, reducing the time required to diagnose faults and make repairs during testing and competition.
This reflects one of the team's wider priorities for UWEFS-13: designing for reliability, accessibility and serviceability, rather than focusing solely on performance.
To find out more about exactly what we used the RS Build Fund for, see our previous article.
Team Dynamics
The development of UWEFS-13 involved a large multidisciplinary team, with students working across areas including:
- Powertrain
- Platform
- Driver Systems
- Aerodynamics
- Electronics
- Lap Simulation
- Business
- Media and Sponsorship
This structure meant that every major design decision required communication between different areas of the team. Changes to the powertrain, for example, could affect chassis packaging, electronics, cooling and vehicle dynamics.
Formula Student therefore provides students with experience not only in engineering design, but also in project management, manufacturing and teamwork.
Results
Following the development of UWEFS-13, UWE Formula Student achieved 10th place at Formula Student UK at Silverstone and 9th place at Formula Student Spain.
These results represent another step forward for the team and demonstrate the value of the development strategy adopted for UWEFS-13.
Lessons Learnt
Using UWEFS-12 to prototype and validate changes meant that issues could be identified before the new car entered manufacturing. This gave the team more opportunity to iterate and reduced the amount of fault finding required once UWEFS-13 was complete.
The project also reinforced the importance of designing for maintenance. In a competition environment, engineers have limited time to diagnose faults and return a car to running condition. Making components easy to remove, inspect and replace can therefore be just as important as reducing their mass.
Finally, Formula Student continues to demonstrate the importance of teamwork and project management. Designing a race car is only one part of the challenge. Delivering it requires hundreds of individual tasks to be completed by different people, often with dependencies between them.
The experience gained through this process is one of the most valuable aspects of Formula Student. Students leave the project with not only technical engineering experience, but also an understanding of how to manage complex projects, communicate across disciplines and make engineering decisions under real-world constraints.
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