Built by Students, Backed by Industry: Supporting UTAS Motorsport

Every year, a team of University of Tasmania students takes on a challenge that extends far beyond the classroom: designing, manufacturing, funding and racing its own Formula-style car.

UTAS Motorsport is a student-driven Formula SAE team bringing together people from engineering, science, technology, business and media. The students operate much like a small automotive development company, working with local sponsors and industry to transform an initial design into a working electric race car.

The competition is not simply about producing the fastest car. Formula SAE teams are assessed across engineering design, cost, business presentation, acceleration, handling, endurance and efficiency. It requires students to balance performance with manufacturability, reliability, safety and financial reality.

Learning advanced composites by making real parts

The Fibreglass Shop supports UTAS Motorsport with composite materials, finishing supplies and the consumables needed to manufacture and refine the car.

Materials supplied to the team have included:

- Carbon fibre fabrics and reinforcement
- Fibreglass
- Infusion resin
- Expanding foams
- Brushes and laminating consumables
- Spray guns and finishing equipment
- Pearl pigments
- General workshop consumables

Carbon fibre is an ideal learning material for a project where stiffness, strength and weight must be considered together. But achieving a successful composite component involves much more than laying fabric into a mould.

Students must consider fibre orientation, resin flow, mould preparation, vacuum integrity, curing conditions, surface finish and quality control. A mistake at any stage can result in dry areas, excess resin, trapped air or a component that does not perform as intended.

Low-viscosity infusion resin is designed to travel through reinforcing fabrics such as carbon fibre and fibreglass under vacuum. The process can produce well-consolidated laminates while giving the fabricator greater control over resin uptake and finished component weight.

Foams, brushes, spray equipment and pigments support the less glamorous but equally important stages of prototyping, mould preparation, filling, finishing and presentation. The result is a project that gives students experience across the entire manufacturing process—not just the final design.

A proving ground for Tasmania’s future engineers

Formula SAE creates the kind of learning environment that is difficult to reproduce through theory alone.

Students must meet deadlines, manage budgets, work with suppliers, solve manufacturing problems and defend their decisions in front of practising engineers. The Tasmanian Government has recognised the program as a pathway into the state’s advanced manufacturing, technology and renewable-energy industries, supporting the team through a three-year capability-development grant announced in 2025.

The team’s results demonstrate that this practical approach is working. At the 2025 Formula SAE-Australasia competition, UTAS Motorsport reported finishing tenth overall, with second place in both the cost and efficiency events, fifth in acceleration and seventh in skid pad.

The cost and efficiency results are particularly relevant. Building a competitive vehicle is one challenge; building one that uses materials, energy and money intelligently is another.

For The Fibreglass Shop, supporting UTAS Motorsport is an investment in the people who may design and manufacture Tasmania’s future vehicles, marine structures, renewable-energy systems and advanced composite products.

The materials supplied today may become a body panel, mould or prototype. The experience gained while using them can remain with a student for the rest of their career.