JLR isn’t among those, but it does have a significant presence at the event. “For students to turn up here with their car already prepped, some of them are having struggles, some of them are flying through scrutineering, all of that builds into their determination, their ethos and showing that they are made for industry,” Dan Hammond, an engineering manager at the company, says.
He adds: “It’s that level where you are getting involved outside of the curriculum on an engineering subject. The technical skills can absolutely take you a long way, but those core soft skills, those business behaviours and how they’re able to apply themselves to the engineering and business presentations, all of that builds the kind of engineers of the future that we really want to have. That’s why we come here and canvass them, but also share our experiences.”
Emma Stopps, JLR’s early careers recruitment manager, says a key objective of the firm’s attendance at Formula Student is also to raise awareness of opportunities outside motorsport. “They’re asking about what they can get involved with in engineering, and it’s about filling that awareness gap,” she says. “I’ve already noticed a few gold-star candidates.”
Kyle Hey, a mechanical design engineer for Oxfordshire e-motor powerhouse Yasa and an alumnus of Formula Student with Oxford Brookes, says the competition helped him to develop the attitude required for a job in automotive. “Teamwork is very important, especially on late nights when things aren’t going so well,” he tells me. It’s all about building resilience but, he adds, “there are a lot of entertaining challenges”.
For teams, that opportunity to meet new people and figure out how to get the best out of each other is vital. Mark Byers, a second-year mechanical engineering student at the University of Sheffield and the marketing and comms director for Sheffield Formula Racing, says: “It’s about having those technical skills and also intra-team skills: project management, working with other people and how to deal with stuff when it goes wrong. Sometimes you’re putting them in the hot seat to make decisions and you’ve got to sort things out really quickly.