4 Reasons We Love Young People's Racing Competitions

Motor racing for young people is huge. The 2023 Formula SAE competition had almost 200 entries across the electric and internal combustion engine (ICE) categories. Formula Student’s 2023 event, meanwhile, saw 3,000 young people taking part, and organisers say they have supported and developed the skills of more than 40,000 young engineers, since the competition’s founding more than 25 years ago.

Alongside these well-known events, there are numerous other racing and automotive engineering competitions for students and young people around the world. Let's take a look at the 4 reasons we love these contests:

You don’t need us to tell you that there’s a long-running shortage of talent to fill the many science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)-related roles that are critical to the global economy.

A survey by STEM Learning in the UK back in 2018 found that 70% of STEM employers had found it challenging to hire people with the necessary skills in the previous 12 months. Fast-forward to today, and the issue remains: results from a survey of the UK’s engineering services sector by trade bodies ECA, BESA, SELECT and SNIPEF, saw a third of respondents highlight staff shortages as the biggest threat to their businesses.

Tackling this issue is complex, of course, but one of the ways to boost the talent pool is to get more people excited about STEM from an early age. And this is precisely what racing competitions for young people do.

Examples include the not-for-profit Greenpower Education Trust events, where participants as young as nine years old can try their hand at designing, building and racing electric cars. Another is the Ten80 Education National STEM League Race Engineering Series, which sees school-age students effectively running their own motorsports business, including racing scale-model remote control cars against other teams.

Classroom and lab-based learning is essential in developing future engineers’ understanding of engineering. But hands-on experience is just as important, when it comes to preparing young people for the jobs market.

The variety of automotive competitions gives students the opportunity to gain this vital practical knowledge. And the great thing is that each competition offers exposure to a different blend of automotive challenges, from creating vehicles from scratch, to converting a standard, road-going car.

Many of the student racing events also attract recruiters from companies in the automotive space, keen to hire their next generation of engineers. Tesla, for example, has been reported to attend Formula SAE events.

This blend of real-world experience and exposure to employers, gives young engineers the ideal platform from which to launch their careers in engineering.

Closely linked to the previous point is the fact that many of these automotive challenges for young people require teams to demonstrate a wide range of skills beyond those of automotive engineering. To succeed in the competitions, for example, teams often need to get involved with other areas of engineering, project management, budgeting, R&D and marketing.

As well as teaching the young engineers these new skills themselves, this approach also exposes them to working in multidisciplinary teams, including with students from right across their university or college communities. This is something that doesn’t happen with many degree courses but is of course essential when pursuing careers in industry.

There’s a profound change underway when it comes to the vehicles on our roads. As if the transition from ICEs to electric and alternative fuels wasn’t revolutionary enough, there’s also the shift towards ever-greater automation to ultimately enhance safety.

Many of the automotive competitions for students and young people are partially or entirely focused on advancing the skills, or even the technologies, in these emerging areas. A great example is Formula Student’s FS-AI event, where participants need to build and develop the driving systems for fully autonomous vehicles.

The Shell Eco-marathon includes an autonomous urban concept competition. And the Eco-car EV Challenge, while not a race, focuses on using automation and vehicle-to-everything (V2X) connectivity to improve energy efficiency and customer experience. This event has a particular focus on equity in mobility, with diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) a key part of the programme.

There are also plenty of opportunities for young people to create and refine vehicles powered by batteries and alternative fuels. As well as the Greenpower event mentioned above, there’s the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge. Here secondary and tertiary students design, engineer, and build solar-powered vehicles before racing them across the harsh terrain of the Australian outback.

As we wrap up, it’s important we touch on the subject of funding. Gaining practical motorsport experience can be expensive, and if we’re to encourage more people to become automotive engineers, support is essential to remove these financial barriers.

This can take many forms. Some events offer financial awards to enable teams to compete, including Formula Student. Other competitions focus on keeping costs low through re-use, including Greenpower and the Ten80 Student Racing Challenge. Their re-usable kits mean schools and colleges can give young people the opportunity to take part year after year, without ongoing financial outlays.

Another way to bring down costs is corporate sponsorship. This could be financial contributions, or the provision of components and expertise – something we have done for a number of teams over the years.