UQR 2021 Season Launch Blog
Last Tuesday night, on May 4th, 2021, the UQ Racing team held our first large event for the year, our 2021 Season Launch. After spending several days working flat-strap on getting the cars ready and preparing all the logistical aspects of the evening, we all filed into the Advanced Engineering Building ready to greet our sponsors, academic advisors and other distinguished guests.
We then made our way to the auditorium where, with the assistance of team member and MC, Caleb, the 2021 Board of Directors presented their plans for the 2021 car season. Team Principal Kyra began by addressing the challenges we faced last year with the COVID-19 pandemic and how despite these setbacks, we were able to have a successful 2020 season culminating in the Queensland Student Shootout in December. Additionally, Kyra discussed how this year, we have increased our team size drastically with the addition of over 60 new members - a very exciting accomplishment! Our 2021 Electrical Vehicle Technical Director, Riley then made his way to the stage to present our upgrade, fix and test plans for our 2020 EV Barnacle and the changes made to our driver trainer program this year. Finally, we heard from our 2021 Driverless Technical Director, Cristina who discussed the incredible progress our driverless team has made both regarding hardware and software developments. She also presented our plans to retrofit our 2019 EV Chicken, which we have managed to return to a rolling state.
At the close of the presentation, we saw a video made by our team member and driver trainer, Mitch showing some of the things we’ve worked on and accomplished so far this year (seen below). We took a team photo together before reconvening outside the auditorium for food and drinks served by our Business Director Victoria, Caitie and Brayden. This gave many of our team members the invaluable opportunity to speak to sponsors, academic advisors, alumni and even friends from Griffith Racing Team and QUT Motorsport. We were also able to show off our hard work first-hand to or ever-supportive family and friends.
An event like this would not be possible without the assistance of a number of people working behind the scenes. Firstly, a big thank you goes towards the faculty at UQ who allowed us to host our event in the Advanced Engineering Building on campus and the staff at the Lakeside Café who kindly assisted us with refrigerators used to keep our refreshments cold. We’d also like to thank Ben Z from UQ IT and Alex from XP Esports for assisting us with all the IT and multimedia as well as the livestream of the presentation. This certainly allowed us to reach sponsors and supporters who were unable to join us in person on the night. Finally, we’d like to thank our generous sponsors who make it possible for us to design and manufacture our vehicles every year, our academic advisors for providing us the opportunity to take our learning beyond our coursework, alumni who always go above and beyond to provide us with helpful feedback on our designs and our supporters with their neverending encouragement. We can’t wait to see where the rest of the year takes us and we look forward to sharing our journey leading up to the FSAE-A 2021 competition!
