Best Place To BuildThese students make & drive Formula race cars all by themselves? 🤯 | BP2B: Student Edition! Ep.01
CHAPTERS
- 0:00 – 0:15
Acceleration, top speed, and the 5‑second safety rule teaser
The video opens with punchy performance and safety claims: sports-car-like acceleration and strict competition egress requirements. These lines set the stakes for both speed and engineering rigor before the host formally introduces the episode.
- •0–100 km/h acceleration is compared to a Porsche 911
- •Modern EVs can still outperform their acceleration benchmark
- •Competition rule: driver must exit within 5 seconds while fully harnessed
- •Safety and performance are framed as co-equal priorities
- 0:15 – 0:54
Welcome to CFI: meeting Team Raftar during a live test session
Vidhi introduces the Student Edition format and arrives at IIT Madras’ Center for Innovation to meet Team Raftar. The context is hands-on and immediate: the car is about to be tested, and the team is mid-prep.
- •Host introduction and location setup (CFI, IIT Madras)
- •Team Raftar introduced as the featured student Formula team
- •Testing day context: the car is being prepared to run
- •Promise of behind-the-scenes access to build and test workflow
- 0:54 – 1:49
Nightly build culture: deadlines, issue-fixing, and rollout targets
Captain Aditya explains how testing drives intense repair cycles and late-night work. The team treats testing like a professional motorsport operation—find issues, fix fast, re-run, repeat.
- •Post-test issues are fixed the same day to keep momentum
- •Daily meetings around 9 PM coordinate tasks across subsystems
- •Typical workday extends past midnight; testing adds extra hours
- •Goal-driven cadence: fix, verify running condition, then roll out
- 1:49 – 2:25
Performance targets: 154 km/h design speed vs. real track constraints
The conversation moves into raw numbers: top speed, track realities, and why acceleration matters more than maximum velocity. Aditya shares their real-world limits and the engineering intent behind the car’s performance envelope.
- •Designed top speed: 154 km/h
- •On-track speeds reached: ~90–100 km/h due to short straights
- •Track straight length (~75 m) makes acceleration more valuable than top speed
- •0–100 km/h in under 4 seconds is the key bragging metric
- 2:25 – 3:14
From combustion to electric: the post-lockdown pivot and competition results
Aditya outlines Raftar’s evolution from an IC team to an electric team and why the switch became necessary. He also highlights early success with the first electric car and international competition exposure.
- •Team origins in 2012 as a combustion program
- •Strategic shift to electric in 2020 following global trends
- •First electric rollout in 2023 and podium finish at Formula Bharat
- •Progression to Formula Student Germany and design award wins
- 3:14 – 3:41
Testing early to become a real motorsports team: tuning and optimization mindset
With the car ready earlier than usual, the team can move beyond ‘just making it run’ to structured testing and tuning. The chapter captures the shift from survival engineering to performance engineering.
- •Early readiness enables months of testing before January competition
- •Focus changes from basic functionality to optimizing every subsystem
- •Iteration loop: test, tune, validate, repeat
- •Aiming for professional-level operations and reliability
- 3:41 – 5:16
Driverless ambitions: scaled autonomous car, SLAM, and a 2027 goal
The conversation expands to the next frontier: driverless. Aditya explains why European competitions are pushing electric + autonomous, and how Raftar is prototyping autonomy on a one-third scale vehicle to de-risk development.
- •European Formula Student events are moving to electric + driverless
- •Raftar’s approach: build a 1/3 scale model for autonomy R&D
- •Testing stack includes perception, SLAM, mapping, and path planning
- •Ambition: be among the first to bring driverless to Formula Bharat by 2027
- 5:16 – 6:22
Controls and traction challenges: launch control, regen, and advanced algorithms
Aditya details the team’s current engineering roadblocks: moving from basic control loops to high-performance controls. The biggest practical hurdle is managing torque vs. tire grip—prompting custom launch control and research-driven control strategies.
- •Next-level controls: launch control and regenerative braking
- •Need for a reliable baseline car to iterate software quickly
- •Battery power may exceed tire grip; torque shaping becomes essential
- •Exploring fuzzy logic and sliding mode control approaches
- 6:22 – 7:06
Team structure and decision-making: 45 members across learning, design, and leadership
Vidhi asks how the team is organized, and Aditya explains a tiered structure that mirrors an engineering organization. The chapter also touches on how leadership aligns subsystem goals with overall vision.
- •Team size: ~45 students
- •Second-years focus on manufacturing/procurement and learning systems
- •Third-years act as the design crew and handle integration/testing
- •Fourth-years run core leadership: management, finances, alignment across subsystems
- 7:06 – 8:13
Guiding principles: weight, strength, and reliability (plus the battery-pack leap)
The team’s product philosophy is distilled into three pillars that drive trade-offs. Aditya gives a concrete example: aggressively reducing battery pack weight after benchmarking global teams.
- •Guiding principles: minimize weight, maintain strength, ensure reliability
- •Every part has a weight target to support performance goals
- •Battery pack weight reduced from ~75 kg to ~40 kg
- •Benchmarking against international teams informs redesign priorities
- 8:13 – 9:52
Learning from global teams: open collaboration, data-sharing, and a feedback loop
Aditya describes Formula Student events as surprisingly collaborative—teams share designs, reasoning, and advice. Raftar uses these interactions to build a ‘mental model’ of strong engineering and maintain relationships with top teams.
- •Teams are open to discussing design choices and trade-offs
- •Raftar collects insights across teams to improve battery and systems integration
- •Maintains ties with top teams (e.g., AMZ, Monash Motorsport)
- •Competition culture blends pressure with camaraderie and knowledge exchange
- 9:52 – 12:25
Full car walkthrough (Part 1): decoupled suspension, driver interface, and tires
The tour begins at the front end: a distinctive decoupled suspension concept aimed at stabilizing aero and grip under braking and cornering. The chapter also covers driver display logic and the team’s tire collaboration with MRF that impacted Formula Student across India.
- •Decoupled suspension separates pitch vs. roll tuning to protect aero and grip
- •Claimed uniqueness in India for this suspension approach
- •Dashboard displays essentials and failure diagnostics tailored to driver preferences
- •MRF collaboration: Raftar-origin tire (MRF ZTD 1) now used by teams nationally
- 12:25 – 19:05
Full car walkthrough (Part 2): carbon fiber aero, chassis precision, HV safety, DRS, and tufts
The tour expands across the car’s major systems—from carbon fiber wings to chassis fabrication precision and high-voltage safety redundancy. It ends with aero testing methods (tufts) and a set of details that make the car feel like a mini professional prototype.
- •Quick-release steering wheel and 5-second egress requirement
- •In-house carbon fiber wing manufacturing and aero simulation workflow
- •Chassis tube construction requires millimeter-level accuracy; pedals designed with high safety factors
- •HV architecture: master switches, redundant safety checks, and emergency disconnect
- •Powertrain and drivetrain overview: aviation-grade motor, chain drive, liquid cooling
- •Rear wing redesign includes DRS-like flap actuation; tufts visualize airflow attachment
- 19:05 – 20:17
Last-minute saves and competition pressure: the 2016 chassis rework story
Vidhi prompts stories of ‘clutch’ moments, and Aditya shares a dramatic example from Formula Student India. The team had to cut and re-weld the chassis overnight to pass technical inspection—highlighting the reality of compliance-driven engineering.
- •Technical inspection can be tougher than the dynamic events themselves
- •2016 incident: frame flagged as non-compliant during inspection
- •Emergency fix: car removed, chassis cut and modified, late-night welding in Noida
- •Returned next day, passed inspection, and competed successfully
- 20:17 – 24:31
Meet the driver (DJ): learning to trust the car, selection via go-karting, and testing pace
As the car gets ready to run, Vidhi interviews driver DJ about what it feels like to drive a student-built machine. DJ explains driver selection and training, and how shakedowns gradually build confidence and speed.
- •DJ has ~1.5 years of driving experience with the team
- •First drive: excitement + fear of crashing the car more than fear for self
- •Driver training/selection uses go-karting to mimic rear-wheel-drive behavior
- •Early shakedowns are conservative (~50 km/h) before ramping up
- •A ‘clutch’ moment: charging just enough to film a required submission run before deadline
