Seven months of effort put in by thirty students of Manipal University came to fruition from 16^th to 19^th July 2009 when Formula Manipal made it to Silverstone F1 race circuit with our car FM09. The learning that we experienced over these four days rivalled the one that we had experienced for the past seven months of sweat and toil. We would like to thank our university, college and our faculty for their support and guidance. Special thanks to our sponsors for having invested their faith in us.

Formula Student UK 2009 was attended by 2000 students from of the best universities around the world and engineers from major Formula 1 teams. Leading automotive and engineering firms such as Aston Martin, Airbus and National Instruments had sent their representatives to the event to set up stalls and attract new recruit.

The first day of the event saw us getting our camps set up and getting our team members registered. FM09 passed through technical scrutineering smoothly after we made a few minor changes which were suggested by the scrutineering committee. Technical scrutineering was passed early on the second day. The brake team finally got time after the scrutineering to get started with the bleeding of the brake circuit; after which the car was tilted to an angle of 45 degrees on a tilt table and passed the inspection for leaks. A surprise awaited us in the afternoon when Mr.Ross Brawn (Team principal,Brawn GP) visited our pit.

The next day began disappointingly with us struggling to get our engine firing smoothly. We got a lambda sensor installed on our exhaust manifold to help with the tuning; however by the time we got FM09 up and running, it was too late to participate in the dynamic events. Our performance at the cost event was encouraging with us placed 10^th overall thus fulfilling our goal of building a cost-effective race car. Along with points scored in the business presentation and design event we finished 65^th overall out of 88 teams.

The last day was spent interacting with other teams and judges, notably Niel Anderson and Claude Rouelle (President, Optimum G) .The judges were impressed with our passion and perseverance and offered encouraging words of advice and feedback. Having gained experience and valuable feedback, we are gearing up for next year’s competition and have already started working on our next car FM-X.