Moratuwa Uni to participate in world’s biggest student motorsport competition

TeamSHARK and DIMO Management including DIMO Chairman and Managing Director Ranjith Pandithage, DIMO Director Vijitha
Bandara CEO Gahanath Pandithage

A group of students representing the Mechanical Engineering Department of Moratuwa University is to take a race car built by them to the world’s biggest motorsport competition—Formula Student 2016, becoming the first ever Sri Lankan team ever to do so. The Formula Student 2016 is to be held at the Silverstone Circuit in the United Kingdom from July 14 to 17 this year.

The competition is expected to feature over 3,000 students, 5,000 attendees, 250 industry professionals and over 130 universities from 30 countries. The competition challenges university student engineers from around the world to design, build and race a single-seat racing car in one year in order to compete in static and dynamic events, demonstrating their understanding and testing the performance of the race car.

Dozens of Formula Student alumni have progressed to Formula 1, and hundreds more are now working at the world’s largest automotive firms helping to design and engineer the cars of tomorrow. Applications were received from teams around the world, and 156 teams have successfully claimed a place for the competition at the iconic Silverstone Circuit, known to be the home of British motorsport. The car christened as ‘D-MORA P1’ is powered by a naturally aspirated 600cc 4 cylinder Honda CBR engine, tuned to deliver 70 bhp (restricted), it manages to propel the car weighing of 300 kg (including a 80 kg driver and fuel) from 0 to 100 km/h in minimal time, accelerating to speeds in excess of 140 km/h (limited).

The steering wheel mounted paddle-shifter provides both the amateur and professional with a memorable formula car experience. The steel tube space-frame chassis coupled with unequal A-arm suspension at the both front and rear gives the customers an affordable race car solution to hone their skills, before entering the professional level.

The student team – TeamSHARK is sponsored by Diesel & Motor Engineering PLC (DIMO), a leading automobile company in Sri Lanka. The company has provided financial support to build the car and will be funding the team’s trip to the UK. Additionally, TeamSHARK was given expert advice and guidance and had complete access to the facilities at DIMO’s Siyambalape premises in order to build the car