Maltese Student Named ‘Most Entertaining Driver’ As Malta’s University Racing Team Places 3rd In International Competition
Maltese engineering student Cleaven Caruana was named ‘most entertaining driver’ as the University racing team placed 3rd overall in the international ‘Formula Student’ race.
Between 6th and 10th July, the University of Malta Racing Team participated in the Formula Student event held at the Silverstone Race Circuit, in the UK.
Malta also placed 3rd overall in the dynamic events class, 1st in endurance, 4th in lap-time stimulation, 5th in acceleration, 5th in skidpad, 7th in the sprint, and 9th in the design event.
Lovin Malta spoke with Cleaven Caruana, who was awarded the award for the most entertaining driver.
“To be honest, the fact that I have never officially competed in motorsports, I was quite surprised that from all those drivers in FSUK 2022, I stood out in the eyes of the judges,” Caruana told Lovin Malta.
“However, I still believe I was capable of pushing the car to its limits because I knew the car inch by inch and thanks to the new track in Ħal Far, I had the opportunity to drive the car, make mistakes and learn from them.”
“Imagine what the team is capable of if we had a track which can better accommodate our car,” he said.
Formula Student (FS) is Europe’s most established educational engineering competition, which celebrated its 20th Anniversary in 2018.
Each year, Formula Student sees over 100 university teams from around the top Universities in the UK and from around the globe travel to Silverstone to compete in static and dynamic events.
The teams are also tasked to produce a prototype for a single-seat race car for sprint racing, and present it to a hypothetical manufacturing firm.
They are then judged by some of the racing industry’s top professionals on design, cost and sustainability, as well as business presentations.
Students then compete in a vehicle which they have designed, built and tested themselves, in line with the Formula Student rules. Before the team can then compete in the dynamic events, they have to pass through a gruelling set of scrutineering exercises.
These include Technical and Safety Scrutineering, a Tilt Test, and Brake and Noise Tests. These tests are carried out on the vehicle by a team of highly experienced scrutineers and race marshals. Given the difficulty and safety standards which need to be achieved, not all teams make it through to the final dynamic events.
The University of Malta Racing Team was the 5th to pass the scrutineering phase-out of the 61 teams competing in the dynamic events.
Then, the racing begins. The dynamic events included the Skid Pad (Figure 8), Sprint, Acceleration, Endurance and Fuel Economy.
The racing car is driven by the University students themselves, who have obtained a racing license, and passed all the necessary tests, including a 5-second vehicle egress test.
Notwithstanding the many challenges the team had to face, UM Racing achieved some truly amazing results competing against the top-tier UK and International Universities, including the University of Oxford, University College London, Universities of Glasgow, Brunel, and Liverpool, Coventry, Bath, and many others.
READ NEXT: Prison Correctional Officer Assaulted By Prisoner At Kordin As Police Report Filed
