Student Team Highlight: Dartmouth Formula Racing

Transcript

Kylie: I joined DFR kind of on a whim. I got into Formula 1, I learned we had a formula racing team. I said, "That sounds cool." It takes a lot to run a racing team, and it takes a lot to run an engineering team beyond just the actual design and manufacturing work. I started on the business team. That was where I was best as an economics major. From there, I became the project manager, and I'm currently the summer captain of the team.

Jeff: This is my third year. So I started in the fall of ’22 as a freshman, and when we only had about two team members remaining over COVID. So it's been really cool to actually see the team build itself back up, and be a part of just getting everything running again.

Andrew: Every year, it's super cool. This car has been in the works since 2019. This is the first year it was really running to its true potential.

West: I came in knowing the team had a working car, and was a little bit worried there wouldn't be much ownership for me to take. But we had the whole design process of building an entire new car this year, and every new member got a ton of ownership, and a lot of hands-on experience.

Jeff: DFR is the best way here, unequivocally, to learn those hands-on engineering skills. You can do math and class all day if you want, but you join the team and you'll be building stuff. You'll be running, you'll be racing.

West: My favorite thing has been seeing the fruits of my labor, and working with my friends on the team. It seems like one of the best communities within Thayer, where you really apply what you've been learning in the classroom. I took a few really applicable engineering classes this year, and I wanted to turn that into something real.

Kylie: We couldn't get anywhere without the team members who don't have a title, who are just a team member, but they're the ones that make the car go. They're the ones that put in a lot of hours in addition to our team leads. So I think that having that very horizontal team structure that we do has really contributed to my understanding of what it means to be a team player, and be a leader on a team, but also a peer and a friend.

Andrew: What I've noticed is that someone's success on the team, it's really just how much they want to learn. And there's just people who are always in Allyn Lab, just always looking, always looking at what other teams are doing, always coming up with new ideas, and it's really just a great... The spirit of innovation always feels alive whenever I walk into that room.