Western Formula Racing - Recruit Year

Being a first year engineering student fresh out of high school, I stepped into the WFR workshop for the first time in September, and instantly fell in love with the beauty and complexity of the world of FSAE. There was so much to learn, and so little time to do it, with the first-year courseload of 7 courses a semester. However, this didn't stop me, and below is the story of my first year at WFR.

My Contributions to the WFR2023

I'd love to sit and talk about the work of my teammates for hours, but as a first year with no experience or knowledge of carbon fiber monocoques, decoupled suspension, aerodynamics, or complex wire harnesses, I had a lot to learn, and that I did. 

Of course, I didn't just sit idly, and took any projects that were within my reach. One such project was the design of the car's livery, including the (and I may be biased) gorgeous paint job, sponsor placement, and ensuring our car passes all FSAE livery rules. I had to learn Solidworks, research rendering software, learn it, and create a full livery package within a constrained timeframe, so as soon as I took on the responsibility of being the Graphic Design lead in early October, I got to work.

Working closely with the model of the car helped me learn a lot about the car's subsystems, and the inner workings of the car, much more than if I had just focused on one particular subsystem. I was most interested about how the systems interacted with each other, so I got more distracted learning and exploring the insides of the car than I'd like to admit. Anyways, onto the actual creation of the livery.

At first, I wanted to come up with concepts for the livery, as last year's was, at least in my opinion, not the best. I did some surveying and asked teammates what they'd like to see on the car, and got many different responses, with some clear themes emerging. After a few weeks of sketching concepts in a (now lost) notebook, and trying different things on a 2-d mockup in Adobe Illustrator, I had a vision for what I wanted the car to look like:

• Keep as much of the monocoque's carbon fiber exposed

• Paint lines across the car to hide the seams in the monocoque

• Stick to a black-gold theme (white and purple were considered, but decided against)

• Have an arrow-like shape near the front to accentuate our geometric nose cone

With this in mind, I created a "blank car" with materials assigned and lighting done in Keyshot, a rendering software commonly used in industry for its support for solid models, unlike surface-model based programs like Blender or Maya, which struggle with Solidworks models. I then created templates on Adobe Illustrator for the car, and got to work designing tens of ideas, keeping in mind the restrictions above, as well as leaving enough space for sponsor logos to show. The rest of the year consisted mainly of tweaking designs, organizing logo placement, and making sure everything passes rules. Below you can see a few of the car's concept designs, followed by the final result at the end.