Meet Sheffield Formula Racing

Sheffield Formula Racing (SFR) is our formula student team of multidisciplinary engineering students studying at the University of Sheffield. At SFR, our team members join in their first year after a rigorous application process. From over 100 applicants a few of the most enthusiastic and dedicated students are accepted and offered the chance to join a design sub-team. Each one of these sub-teams focuses on designing a specific area of the car such as the chassis, or the drivetrain, giving students a chance to explore a part of the car that they are passionate about and rapidly building their technical design skills. After the design phase, each component is manufactured either in our university’s lab facilities or through the help of sponsorship. We have strong connections with a variety of sponsors that we are very grateful for, as sponsorship allows us to run the team successfully and teaches key networking and communication skills to our members.   

We first entered the Formula Student UK (FSUK) competition in 2010 with SFR01, coming 62nd out of 76 teams. We were pleased with our achievement of being able to bring a working car to our first-ever event, however, the team was eager to make improvements for next year. In 2018, SFR09 was our first car to place in the top ten, with 5th place out of 81 teams. Another key achievement was SFR10 in 2019, this was our first car to run an aero package. In order to design and build SFR10 our team members had to find their way around a variety of advanced design techniques; some of these included, pioneering resin infusion techniques, surfacing, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and wind-tunnel analysis. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 competition was held virtually, and our 2021 car had to be a development on our previous 2019 SFR10 car. Overcoming these obstacles, we designed and built SFR10B, our most advanced car yet and managed to take 1st at the 2021 FSUK competition as well as 8 of 13 awards.

After our success last year, we are determined to defend our title and build a car that's more advanced and reliable. This year’s car will feature exciting, never seen before SFR technology such as our first-ever carbon monocoque, a brand new revised aero package to deliver even more downforce and (although it won’t be seen on track) the beginnings of our transition to a fully electrified car. We are currently wrapping up our design stage and have started to manufacture key parts for SFR12, so keep a lookout for updates and more exciting announcements.