These students make & drive Formula race cars all by themselves? 🤯 | BP2B: Student Edition! Ep.01

ℹ️ EPISODE INFO

Released

October 24, 2025

Duration

24m

Channel

Best Place To Build

Watch on YouTube

▶ Open ↗

📝 EPISODE DESCRIPTION

Welcome to The Best Place to Build: Student Edition! A podcast about the students, brought to you by the students of IIT Madras. This series captures stories of curiosity, creativity, and courage from the campus that’s home to India’s brightest minds. Here, every idea has a place to grow from dorm-room discussions to prototypes that take on the world. In this first episode, join Vidhi as she takes you on a tour of Team Raftar Formula Racing, IIT Madras’ Formula Student team that has been designing, building, and racing high-performance electric vehicles (EVs) for over a decade. These students are not just car enthusiasts. They are engineers, designers, and innovators working together to redefine automotive engineering and sustainable mobility. From battery systems and motor design to aerodynamics and performance testing, every aspect of the electric race car is built on campus. A true testament to what student-led innovation can achieve. You’ll hear what it takes to be part of a Formula Student competition, the challenges of building a prototype car, and how a shared passion for engineering turns into national and global recognition. ✨ Topics Covered:

• How students build electric cars from scratch
• Inside IIT Madras’ Formula Racing garage
• Engineering design and team dynamics
• Challenges of building a Formula Student car in India
• The making of Raftar’s electric vehicle prototype
• Student-led innovation at IIT Madras

Chapters: 00:00 Introduction 00:17 Welcome to the Best Place to Build: Student Edition 01:15 Introducing Team Raftar, IIT Madras 03:33 Testing for Formula racing competitions 05:20 Team Raftar’s driverless ambition 06:45 The people behind the best student formula team 07:54 Team Raftar’s guiding principles 10:10 Raftar car tour 20:30 Interview with the racer behind the steering wheel 23:35 Best student formula race car demonstration!

🎤 SPEAKERS

• Vidhi

  host

🧾 EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode of Best Place To Build, featuring Vidhi, These students make & drive Formula race cars all by themselves? 🤯 | BP2B: Student Edition! Ep.01 explores iIT Madras students build electric Formula car, test, and go autonomous Team Raftar at IIT Madras runs an intensive late-night build-and-test cycle to move from merely “running the car” to systematically optimizing performance for competition.

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