Three beautiful years of working in an amateur team

It’s been a couple of years now but experiences are lessons learned for life. And thanks to COVID I finally have the time to document it. I come from a college where there’s a thin line that separates the girl’s and the boy’s hostel. A thin line from a bird’s eye view because in reality, it’s a railway track! Yes, you read it right, it was a 1.4m wide railway track and the supporting architecture that separated the two hostels. I wasn’t really affected by this situation except for the time when I slept at 5:30 AM and a super annoying engine would honk the life out of me at 6 AM sharp. However, humans eventually adapt to everything.

I came to VIT with a simple goal. I wanted to be the topper. But then something happened in the very first week. It was the roll-out event of Pravega Racing! I entered the auditorium and it was jam-packed. Almost no breathing space and that’s when I realized VIT isn’t a college, it’s a civilization. I thought there must be faculties, advisors who would be presenting this. But I soon realized they were college students. It was a formula student team with 60 members who work together in a workshop to design and build a car that can participate in FSAE events held across the globe. And if you heard the engine roar that night you would do anything to be a part of it. And that’s the moment when the goal of being the topper shifted to being an FSAE alumnus.

I wasn’t a gearhead initially but then joining such a racing team was all that mattered to me. And soon during my second semester, I joined Team Ojas, the one that didn’t have an engine because #wespeakelectric. It is VIT’s official Formula student electric team which started in 2013. The best thing about FSAE teams is that you don’t have a CEO or CTO. You have seniors that pass on the legacy to their juniors with a trust that we won’t ruin their hard work and effort. It’s like passing your firelight.

The objective of being recruited in an FSAE team was fulfilled. And then comes the fun part! It was during my second semester when I was officially a member of Team Ojas. VIT runs on a schedule of 8 AM to 7:30 PM where we have classes on and off. So when did we manage to design and manufacture a car? When the rest of the college was sleeping, chilling, or studying (I don’t know), we were building on ideas, designs, and iterations. We worked together at the college campus from 9:00 PM to 3 AM to make this dream come true. And, I was one of those 60 members who was working on vehicle aerodynamics but this time the goal wasn’t to be the topper but to design the first aerodynamics package for the vehicle.

For a long time, it didn’t matter to me how strict VIT was. Until the day when I first got my late-night permits. It said 9:00 PM to 12:00 AM and I thought my warden had mistaken so I informed her it’s till 3:00 AM and she said that’s only for the boys. And soon realized that I was the only female member in the team so I didn’t hold a majority. However, humans adapt to everything. So eventually I started feeling lucky because they at least allowed me till 12. The initial days were so weird. I use to enter a classroom full of guys and I would sit on the first bench but that didn’t last very long. Soon I made friends. Correction, friends for life. We use to argue, fight, rant, complain but we always had each other’s back. And then came the semester exams followed by summer break when night passes were not allowed.

On July 16, 2016, my sophomore year started. The team had now shifted to the manufacturing phase and we were required to work in the workshop. Now, this is the point when that thin line from the bird’s eye view started creating troubles for me. The Workshop was located on the other side of the thin line, in the men’s hostel. And the only way to reach there was guarded by 5 security Anna (as we use to call them in VIT). So obviously breaking into the workshop was never an option. It has to be legal and organized. The night permit with the time limit of 12 AM was still okay but no entry into the workshop that meant not being able to work on the dream. I knew I didn’t hold a majority but there were other girls like me in different teams and after a wait, for a couple of months, our Chief Warden got us our permits. To be honest, it felt like I conquered the world that day.

So for the year 2016, we were started from scratch working on TOR 17 (car identity number) which would participate in Formula Student Italy. This one year was full of failure for me. I and one of my teammates were working on aerodynamics and we had no prior experience. From importing the coordinates of the first NACA airfoil to making a poor low-fidelity prototype we sucked at it totally. We didn’t know how to do the fluid analysis, design proper mountings, manufacture the wings but we did excel in understanding the concepts of Aerodynamics. So 2016–2017 was a year full of realizations, iterations, and lessons that could help us achieve a lot better results in our next try.

Now the fresh year had started, 2017. The pressure was too much since this was my final year in the team, I was appointed as the aerodynamics lead and I had to deliver what I was recruited in the team for. The good part about the 2017 year was, it wasn’t just me and another member but now we were a team of 7 members. It was a department and I was made the department head. We started from scratch, teaching the basics to our juniors, discussing the design strategy, setting a timeline, and aiming to design a one single aerodynamics component, the front, and the rear wings. (We have several other components like a diffuser, side wings, etc.).

The design methodology was simple, design, simulate, modify, and repeat. And after 8 iterations we finally achieved a design that would complement the vehicle performance. This time, we didn’t fail. In fact, it was for the first time in 4 years of the team’s history that we had the aerodynamics implement in the car. It was for the second time when I felt like I conquered the world. But soon I realized this was just the concept we had made. The cost of manufacturing a wing can be huge and being an amateur team we were always short on funds. For the first minute, the team was applauding us for our designs, and the next minute, realizing how expensive the manufacturing process could be they were all against it. From being the coolest thing on the car to being useless, it all happened on the same night. Now the job was not just to take care of workshop permits, design aerodynamics, teach juniors but also convince our teammates that this would definitely help with vehicle performance. On some days, it was so frustrating that everything seemed meaningless. The efforts and fun were all in vain if you don’t see the results. But soon I realized, it not about me. It’s about the team and the one common goal, a good FSAE electric vehicle. And if I would lose hope then what am I gonna tell my juniors? The expectations one has from a college project team are self-oriented. Students usually fail to understand the team motive and the concept of a common goal. It was a big challenge to motivate myself and the juniors to hold on to the team.

We were on a tight budget, short on days, exams were approaching, documenting the design work was still pending and I can count on 100 other things which were messed up. But we managed to participate in Formula Student Italy with the complete aero design! And this was only possible because of the teamwork. For the first time, we started working as a team and not as individual departments. The management department got us sponsorships. We explored local sources around the university to fetch the materials. For the last three years, I thought Vellore was just a useless village where people neither know English nor Hindi. But when I started exploring the useless village I found some really skilled machine operators and craftsmen. The first man to help us was a local craftsman who carved fiberglass to make beautiful doors. He actually came to our college and helped us with the process of vacuum molding manufacturing techniques. It’s a process where we lay up carbon fiber reinforced polymer with epoxy and hardner and let it rest at a certain pressure to obtain a robust, lightweight flap. The first time we got the two flaps ready forming a complete single wing, it was the third time I felt like I conquered the world. That December vacation we didn’t go back home to celebrate the New Year or Christmas. We stayed back just to manufacture wings. And my teammates, who thought aero was useless, they helped me throughout the manufacturing process. It wasn’t perfect but far better than the very first thermocol prototype. When we first mounted the wings on the car, I got the flashback of all the hurdles, the night permits, fighting my own teammates, failed attempts but in the end, it was all worth it!

With this car, we participated in the Formula Bharat design challenge, Formula Green India. Both these events were held in Coimbatore where we were the champions at Formula Green. And finally, we took this car to Formula Italy 2018 at Ricardo Paletti Circuit in Parma. We bagged 13th in the design event and 5th in the Cost event among 37 international teams. Formula Student Italy was the fourth and the final time when I felt like, ‘I conquered the world’.