Hello, my name is Senan Stanley. I’m a second-year engineering student with a big interest for anything cars and any cutting-edge technology. I’m also the leader of the Chassis department for Formula Trinity.
I don’t have a lot of experience working in the automotive industry (no one does on the team), but I have a good bit working as the leader of a team. I got involved with Formula Trinity in it’s very early days out of a love and curiosity of how complex systems work.
The Chassis Department probably isn’t the most well-known or illustrious section of an F1 car, but we’re very important all the same and a lot of consideration needs to go into the chassis model’s design and creation. We are the centre structure that holds the entire car together, and what almost every component is mounted to. So, we are subject to every force that every other department makes. On top of this we have to try and trim down every gram we can, reduce drag and oppose the weight of the driver and the forces of his actions.
My team is currently working on finishing our Solidworks models, trying to tune them to the specifications of the rules and of the other departments. Built on this we have begun virtual analysis on our chassis, to try and account for the real-world loads on our car and adjust our prototypes to suit. Unfortunately though, there is a lot of writing and record-keeping in our subsystems, so we have already begun our final technical report.
I believe a lot of what the chassis team and myself have learnt will be extremely useful for the future. The mastery of so many skills has been attained in such a short time. So many people are working at a level that is years ahead of their peers or course. Formula Trinity has required a huge amount of work and a lot of commitment, but I feel much more confident now than I did months ago.
To anyone who wants to join you’re going to have to do a whole lot of work. But. You’re going to meet some amazing people, further yourself and your career and most of all, learn more than you have all year.
I’d love to see how far we can go with this competition, to build a working electric or totally autonomous race car. Hopefully to create a legacy in Trinity for years to come.