Years of intense work, uncertainty related to the pandemic restrictions, tests, the last upgrades and finally – fantastic performance on the racing track Autodrom Most. Last week, students from the team Proton Dynamic (section of the Sports Cars Student Research Group operating with the WUT Faculty of Automotive and Construction Machinery Engineering) took the third place in general classification of the international competition Formula Student.

Our young engineers competed against 14 teams from all over Europe. Their construction, under the working name PD1.5, achieved very good results in the following categories:

• Business Presentation (2^nd place),
• Acceleration (3^rd place),
• Skidpad (2^nd place),
• Efficiency (2^nd place),
• Endurance (2^nd place).

Excellent results gave the Warsaw University of Technology contestants the title of the third best team at the event. Proton Dynamic is the first team from Poland which participated in dynamic competitions and finished the long-distance race in the electric drive bolide category.

Electric bolide of the team Proton Dynamic, photo FB Proton Dynamic

‘We would like to thank everyone who supported us and believed in us, especially our sponsors, the Faculty of Automotive and Construction Machinery Engineering and the university,’ says Stefan Pytel, team leader. ‘We are planning to keep up the work. The competition opened many doors to us. We are planning to use the new opportunities and develop new constructions, we also want to involve more and more students. The design process of a bolide is extremely complex and time-consuming, and work on the new generation is underway. We hope that thanks to collaboration with various companies, the university and also the Ministry of Education and Science we will be able to achieve our goals: build a new construction, next year attend more than one competition and take even higher places,’ a recent graduate of the WUT Automotive Faculty sums up the plans of the team.

The team Proton Dynamic consists of:
Dawid Andrzejewski, Oskar Bogacz, Maciej Górski, Wiktor Kamiński, Jakub Kopiel, Łukasz Kordys, Juliusz Kotruchow, Jarosław Królik, Jakub Leleniewski, Michał Łukaszewicz, Tomasz Łobodziec, Jan Pichell, Bartosz Potęga, Marcin Pycka, Stefan Pytel, Andrzej Ryczek, Marta Skrzyczyńska, Daniel Szczepański, Patryk Średniawa, Filip Wyrzykowski.

In May this year the team received a Ministry grant within the project “Student research groups create innovations”. Thanks to the obtained funds, students will be able to design and build a laboratory stand reflecting the high power drive and a mobile loading & diagnostic station. After the necessary tests, the system will be used in their electric bolide. Thanks to the station it will be possible to quickly load the battery package and thereby save time during dynamic tests of the class Formula Student.

The construction PD1, which is the basis of the bolide used in this year’s competition, premiered in 2019.