Each year, students from around the globe descend onto the Midlands of England at Silverstone Circuit for one of the most competitive student engineering competitions of the year: 22 laps around a kilometre-long track, with cars that can reach over 150 kilometres per hour. While racing for the title, one winner is crowned out of many, many losers. If one were to check the competition’s history of winners and qualifiers, Trinity would appear to be absent. This year, the team at Formula Trinity is hoping to change that.

The Formula Student UK (FSUK) competition has challenged representatives from top engineering programs around the world to create their own racing car since 1998. According to the Formula Trinity website, over 400 universities and 12,000 students take part in the contest, making it one of the biggest student engineering competitions in the world. The Trinity team has been working towards the goal of FSUK since Formula Trinity began in 2017, taking home the Best Newcomer Award in 2022. The team was given the award despite not making it through all of the six static and dynamic testing rounds, a feat difficult enough to knock out the vast majority of teams from the contest. This year, however, the team hopes to make it through all testing rounds and get wheels on the track for the race. 

Trinity has attempted this feat many times, with last July’s competition being the furthest the racing team has gone. The car had made it past all “static” testing (testing that is done in a lab by technicians) and was set to move onto the dynamic testing phase. In this phase the FTX5 car, affectionately named “Bertie,” would be put through the final rigorous “endurance” test on the track. This involves testing the car’s ability to manoeuvre and hold high speeds on an actual track against other cars. However, during the track testing phase immediately preceding the endurance race, the brakes on the car failed and not enough time remained for the team to fix the brakes before the race started. The Trinity team was disqualified. 

“We were really proud to do as well as we did, despite the circumstances,” said Michael Morgan, a fourth-year Physics student and one of the drivers for Team Trinity. Morgan insists that the team is now back and better than ever. Their secret is a new car, the FTX6. They hope it will make it all the way to race day this year; finally giving the team the opportunity to race against universities from around the world to see who has the driving, engineering and design skills to truly make a champion car. “There’s a lot of music, maths, and engineering that goes into this one piece of technology […] it’s satisfying to see all those pieces and parts come together and work,” Morgan said in an interview.

The team ended up being the only Irish team to get a car on the track last year, which makes sense, considering the car’s impressive features. The team drives a 300 kilogram car with a six-gear 0.6 litre SB600 Honda motorcycle engine, meaning what the car loses in weight capacity, it quickly makes back in power output. The car has 80 brake horsepower with a top speed of 130-140 kilometres per hour on a rear-wheel drive setup. This may not rival the output that Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc contend with on the F1 circuit, but it is quite impressive for the Formula Student world. The car is built for acceleration, rather than top speed, as many of the tracks the car will (hopefully) encounter feature enough tight sections to rival Le Mans. “[The Silverstone track] is very tight, full of twists and turns,” said Morgan. 

The car can reach a speed of 60 kilometres per hour in about 4.4 seconds: not bad for a couple of students working between endless engineering exams and hectic personal lives. The team also has plans to eventually go electric with its racing machine in order to further buff efficiency. Several other universities have already made this change, including Oxford University, which is a ubiquitous presence at FSUK. 

In the meantime, Michael and his teammates have lots of work to do before the race season begins this summer. Formula Student rules state that there must be a new chassis for the car each year. The chassis acts as a skeleton for the race car, keeping all the essential parts in their respective place. A new chassis means removing most of the car’s parts and putting them back together. This prevents any team from building an unstoppable dynasty with any one car, but it also means lots of work for the Formula Trinity team. 

Formula Trinity’s team of engineers and designers have reportedly already begun this process, taking apart old Bertie and putting her back together again, but not without a few improvements. The team has already addressed last year’s braking problem with an all-new brake setup, replacing the braided steel lines that failed and correcting brake fluid leaks. The car is so different, in fact, that the team is currently in the process of thinking for a new name, as “Bertie 2.0” perhaps wouldn’t do the newness of the car justice: Not to mention it isn’t very catchy.

As for further upgrades apart from the brakes, Morgan and his team can pretty much all agree on one thing.

“We’d love to turbocharge it in the future,” Morgan said, in regards to the Trinity race car. 

Turbocharging, however, is quite expensive, Morgan confessed. That and many other desired upgrades that would do wonders for Formula Trinity in the workshop and on the track are simply not possible with the current budget allotment from College. Last year, the team got by on a more-than-modest budget of €12,000, with almost a third of that being required for just the FSUK entrance fee. A budget of €50,000 or more, comparatively, is not uncommon in American and British universities also entering the contest. Sponsorships are also essential to the team fulfilling their goals on time, with SIG, Irish Special Steels and Cadence being some of the major sponsors for the team. Cadence in particular has close ties with McLaren F1 racing, one of the premier teams in motorsport and an essential connection for those hoping to move forward with the racing industry in the future.

“It’s a really good pathway into motorsport,” added Morgan. “That would be a dream of mine, to be a race car driver […] but of course, it’s an expensive hobby.” Morgan himself is one of four team drivers for Formula Trinity, and, like most professional racers, has “been into racing since a young age.” He spent many of his formative years go-karting and cultivating what he calls “the relationship between man and machine”. His father was an aeroplane mechanic, and often spent time with Morgan and his brother with go-karts in the back garden teaching fundamentals behind the wheel. “He’s always tried to instil that ‘do it yourself’ attitude’ in me and my brother,” said Morgan, regarding his father.

Morgan continued driving go-karts as he grew older, even joining DU Karting as a driver as well, though, as Morgan attests, it is a much more violent sport. “Turns out, people are a lot less scared of contact than you think they are,” Morgan said, referring to other go-kart racers. 

Eventually Morgan graduated to cars and bought a used Mazda MX-5 convertible, a car he often takes to the track to race in the offseason. Even this wasn’t enough for the driver, however, as he soon switched towards his father’s interest in aircraft after inheriting a beat-up Piper cub PA-18 from the 1960s. Morgan has since flown solo several times in his native Ashbourne, in County Meath, racking up over twenty-five hours of flight time. He hopes to secure his pilot licence this summer.

“I’m kind of a jack of all trades, master of none,” Morgan joked. 

He went on to comment that Formula Trinity is in part the one to blame for this, with Morgan himself having experience in the marketing and suspension teams in years past This year, he has added Head of the Powertrain Department on the IC Engineering team to his CV, overseeing all auxiliary systems to the engine, including cooling, radiator, and fuel lines.

With Morgan’s recent receiving of IC Engineer of the Year from the society, it makes sense that he carries with him an unflinching can-do attitude: “I just applied to the team last year, it was after the pandemic and I was looking for something to do, and just thought ‘screw it, why can’t I do this? Why can’t I give this a go?’” He continued, “I had experience coming into the team, but a lot of it has been figuring it out as I go, which has been a challenge, but also it’s just moving forward.”

Certainly not everything has been easy for Morgan, as with the rest of the team, but perseverance in the face of meagre budgets, disqualifications, and even global pandemics, has always been the team’s way. A racer’s life is never going to be without hardship, just ask Morgan’s racing inspirations: Colin McRae and Aryton Senna, both of whom died in vehicle accidents. As Morgan well knows from his violent history with go-karting, no one gets into racing for comfort. It is a nervous sport, which is why before most races one can find Morgan listening to Deftones and trying to “visualise his racing line”. But, Formula Trinity thrives despite everything: it enjoys one of the largest social media followings of any society on campus (22.9k on Instagram), and, as the team has testified, the car hasn’t crashed (yet). Instead, the team has steadily improved each year, and the next step surely lies in Trinity going head-to-head with other universities on the track at Silverstone, with Morgan himself behind the wheel.

“You just have to put yourself into the mindset of ‘okay, I don’t know all the answers, but I can figure it out’.” 

The team has certainly figured itself out so far. And, as they state on their website, new members are always welcome. Just remember to bring your knowledge of computational fluid dynamics, finite element analysis, and, of course, welding. If that sounds too difficult, the team encourages all to watch the race as well. To watch what could be Trinity’s first race win, tune in to the livestream on the Formula Student Youtube page this July, between the 17th and the 21st.