It’s a little-known event, where each year, around 1,000 universities around the world compete in Formula SAE. This competition is organised under SAE International, and challenges university students to design, build, and compete with a small formula-style race car.
DriveLife headed to the event at Calder Park Raceway near Melbourne, to spend some time with the University of Canterbury Motorsport (UCM) team, see what the teams have designed for 2025, what they must go through to be able to compete, and ideally to see either UCM or University of Auckland take home top honours.
As a bonus of this trip, we’ll be commuting to the racetrack and around Melbourne in the new, 388kW Cadillac Lyriq, a full EV SUV with about 530km of range. It’s in the top ten list for New Zealand Car of the Year, and the EV tie-in to the UCM EV race car is perfect.
Formula SAE – what is it?
Formula SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) is an event where teams must build their own formula-style race car and then compete on a track against other universities. But it’s not all about raw performance or handling; teams are scored on a number of categories, such as endurance, reliability, range, and design.
Each year, more than twenty competitions take place worldwide, where teams compete to earn the highest possible points. While most entrants are engineering students and it’s officially a student engineering competition, any university student can participate if they are part of their university’s motorsport team. Some teams even include specialist business studies, health and safety and media studies students.
In fact, Formula SAE is the largest student-engineering design competition in the world.
What It Involves
Design & Build: Teams design and build a small, single-seat, formula-style race car from scratch.
Engineering Focus: Emphasis is on innovation, cost-effectiveness, and manufacturability rather than outright speed.
Project Management: Students manage budgets, timelines, media, and sponsor relationships – similar to a real-world engineering project.
Competition Structure
Static Events
• Design Presentation: Judges evaluate engineering decisions and creativity
• Cost Analysis: Teams justify production costs and demonstrate feasibility
• Business Presentation: Pitch the car as a product to a hypothetical investor
Dynamic Events
• Acceleration: Straight-line speed test
• Skidpad: Measures cornering ability
• Autocross: Handling and agility on a tight course
• Endurance & Efficiency: A long-distance run to test reliability and fuel economy
2025 Formula SAE – Melbourne
With 7 countries represented in Melbourne, 33 cars in total are registered to compete over the 4 days of the competition.
All cars require scrutineering and that includes mechanical, and high and low voltage checks. While teams will undoubtedly be hoping for fine weather, all cars must also pass a rain test to successfully make it through scrutineering. And if any changes are made to a car, that part of the car must be scrutinised again before the vehicle can compete.
Each team is competing to get as close as possible to the maximum 1,000 points. Points are awarded across all the static and dynamic categories. For the dynamic driving tests, each team must use one of their four designated drivers, with every driver required to take the wheel at least once. This rule ensures fairness by preventing teams from gaining an advantage through a single fast driver.
The final endurance event is the most lucrative, where cars must complete a 22km race that counts for 300 points and 100 efficiency points. If you don’t finish the endurance section, it is almost game-over.
UCM was founded in 2013 and has multiple podiums, including an overall win in 2023.
As a point of difference within UCM, each year 20 students take it on as a capstone project. They run the team, design the car and take it from concept to competition in under 12 months. At around 30, their team is much smaller than other university teams. Some come to the event with 100 team members.
In UCM, team members must finish their own system to take ownership, and it’s that accountability that really makes the project valuable, says the team.
Every year, they start with a blank sheet of paper to design every component of the car, pushing people to innovate, rather than repeat. The whole driver for UCM is innovation, and they see this as a point of difference over other teams. For example, each year, UCM builds their chassis from scratch, where others will reuse the same chassis for two years or more.
Rodin Cars have returned as the principal sponsor of UCM. The team has had access to Rodin’s autoclave, their 3D printing systems, and facilities, and this has allowed them to try new ideas and manufacturing techniques.
The team says the support from Rodin Cars has been huge, and enabled them to buy the new DTI motor and inverter package, along with massive improvements in power delivery, weight, efficiency and reliability. This even extends to the wheels, where UCM made their own carbon-fibre wheels to save weight.
UCM’s aims for 2025
- Light weight
- Improved dynamics and handling
- Dedicated team on torque vectoring and traction control
- Increase reliability over all systems
Key developments for 2025
- New chassis design for better airflow and aero performance
- Improved traction and power delivery
- Optimised and redesigned gearbox
- Topology-optimised, 3D-printed titanium uprights
- DTI supplied a new motor for 2025, with UCM one of just ten teams selected to use the new drivetrain system.
The 2025 car was tested over 200km before the Melbourne event, so hopes were high for reliability.
While the car is redesigned each year, the drivetrain is something that can and often is reused. According to the team, the old drive train was on its last legs; it was purchased in 2016 when UCM first competed in the EV class.
Friday 12th December
Today is all about scrutineering; the teams will spend all day at the track, ensuring their cars pass many, many vigorous checks before they are allowed to continue on to compete in the dynamic events.
We arrived at the UCM pit garage to find it all go; the UCM car had failed the mech check, and so the team had to fix the list of items for it to pass. For most of the team, that meant standing around waiting for the techs to get it sorted.
Quite a few hours later, the car was rolled over to the scrutineering bay for a full check over.
While that was happening, we were filled in on earlier events in the day. In the morning, the car was presented to the Design and Costs judges. Here, the exact cost to rebuild the car would be disclosed, down to every last nut and bolt. A car that is more expensive to build would receive fewer points. Any donated or reused parts must be costed out and included, to ensure a level playing field.
The Design side of the judging is where the team explains and defends design decisions against a panel of judges, including showcasing technical knowledge, reasons for decisions and the workflow of making and building the car.
It’s so hot today; 29 degrees, little shade and yet we can see participants from Australia and other countries walking around with long pants and hoodies on. Incredibly, some are wearing jackets to stay warm. Sadly, due to too much wind, teams were unable to put their gazebos up, that left some scrambling, trying to find some shade.
The UCM car is still being checked over, so we check out some of the other teams also having their cars scrutinised. The University of Queensland have their autonomous race car there. The autonomous side of the car is simply a LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) unit, bolted above the driver’s headrest. They don’t need a driver, steering wheel or driver’s seat, but the rules stipulate they must have these.
The autonomous aspect of the car does the steering, brakes and acceleration. They do not have a rear-facing LiDAR unit, since they don’t care what is behind the car.
The weight is shown on the Queensland car’s front; 261kg. Many of the cars we spot are over 200kg, while UCM’s car total weight is 167kg. It has a carbon fibre chassis, while some other teams have a spaceframe chassis, reducing the cost but increasing weight. The total frame weight of the (monocoque) UCM car is 17kg.
You can see sensors all over the cars, and the engineering that has gone into each design is obvious. On the other side of the bays is a four-wheel drive EV race car, looking quite impressive, if overly complex. In previous years, UCM have built 4WD race cars, as well as four-wheel steering cars but this year decided to stick to simple and light weight.
One of the other cars being checked over is petrol-powered. There are 8 ICE cars here, and the rest are EV, with three of those as fully autonomous.
With some loud cheers, the UCM car passes its mech scrutineering, and can move onto the second to last test, the Rain Check. This means simulated rain goes all over the car for 2 minutes, and then the car must sit for two minutes afterwards, to allow water to potentially seep into any electronics etc.
Once again, the UCM car passes, and it’s onto the brake test. Here, the driver needs to lock all brakes up – that’s it. Drivers get two goes at it, at any speed they choose.
The UCM driver entered the straight very slowly, so locking up the wheels would not make too big a flat spot on the tyres. They had seen other teams go far too fast in this test and get the car sideways and fail. They only need to lock all four wheels under braking, and once hitting the marker, brakes were applied hard at only around 20km/h, and all brakes locked up. Success! This was the end of the day’s tasks for UCM, and a final sticker was added to the front of the car to signal it had passed all scrutineering and approved for tomorrow’s dynamic events.
On getting back to the Lyriq at the end of the day, it’s now 35 degrees. We are extremely thankful for the ventilated seats in the car – they make all the difference on a hot day. As a bonus, DriveLife was the first motoring magazine to test out the new Cadillac connected services app. This meant (for example) we could turn the car’s aircon while still in the pits, and get back to the car to find it already cooled down. It’s hard to put a price on that.
Using the new app, an owner can also lock/unlock it, check their range, sound the alarm or flash the lights, and open the tailgate. It’s all very simple to use and logical, unlike some other car-manufacturers’ apps.
Saturday, 13th December
It starts off at 15 degrees outside at 8am, so we’re really hoping for ‘normal’ weather, and not to get even more sunburnt.
There are two dynamic tests today: a skid-pan test and an acceleration test. The skid pan involves two laps of a small figure-eight circuit.
The ICE cars went first, sounding awesome. Most are running motorcycle engines from 1 to 4 cylinders, all with custom exhausts, perhaps just to make them sound good. Each car has a driver from the university it belongs to.
The EVs were faster than the ICE car and even though the UCM car is only rear-wheel drive, it still had the fastest time of the day over all cars, if only by 0.7 of a second. When you consider it was against 4WD cars it’s still an impressive result, and it’s UCM’s first win on the skid pan since 2016. Some other drivers got a bit over-keen with the right foot and took out cones, but no damage was done other than to pride.
Once all the cars had done their two runs at the skid pan, it was on to the acceleration test in the pits of the track. Drivers would get 2 shots at accelerating as fast as possible to the 100-metre mark. This is a test that the 4WD cars would dominate.
Sunday 14th December
There are two dynamic tests on this final day: Autocross and Endurance.
After a stressful morning in the pits with faults to the car, UCM were looking like a no-show for autocross. But last-minute fixes got the car to the track to take on the test, albeit a couple of hours late, which resulted in time penalties. Only 17 cars managed to compete in the autocross, as others were clearly having similar issues. After initially placing third in the first run, UCM’s second run saw them land the fastest overall time, beating even the all-wheel drive cars.
Each team had two drivers who did autocross, and each driver had two attempts at each dynamic test – so only 4 overall attempts, maximum. In endurance testing, each driver drives half the laps each, in one go.
The last test for every team is Endurance. Here, each team’s car would need to drive 22km without stopping, except for a mandatory driver change at the halfway point. During the change, no fixes or modifications to the car could be made.
The 22km would be 20 laps of a circuit laid out with cones, so not just a simple oval test. With lots of left-right changes, the track would push their cars a bit harder to see if they would fail. A driver could go more slowly to keep the car in good health, but points are also awarded for your position overall, so you can’t go too slow.
Apparently, in previous years it has been “carnage” on the track, with dead cars littering the sides. If a car breaks down during the 22km, you can’t touch it at all – it gets pushed to the middle paddock and that’s the end of your test.
Like other teams, UCM was thankful the temperature at the track was down to 15 degrees, compared to the 30 degree-plus on other days. This meant for less stress on both EV and petrol-powered cars (and their drivers!).
With 20 laps completed, UCM’s car lasted the distance and ended up being 1.15 seconds ahead of any other cars. But it was not long until University of Queensland posted some blistering times with their AWD car, managing to shave 6 seconds off the UCM time.
The endurance ‘race’ over, there was nothing to do but wait for the results.
After only placing in the top three of any section once last year, this time the University of Canterbury Motorsports took out:
- First in Efficiency
- First in Skid Pan
- Third place in Endurance
- Fastest time in Autocross but after a 5-second penalty, were moved down to third place
In the end, those results and their total points meant that UCM were the overall winners of Formula SAE 2025. It’s a huge achievement for the students involved, and the surprise from the team on being announced as winners says it all.
It was an honour to be able to witness the win, but it’s still the overall engineering ideas and level of attention to detail that blew us away. Every team put in their 100% to make the best car they could. Some team members are picked up by F1 teams after these events, so it’s an excellent way to get entry into motorsport design or engineering.
Melbourne Tiki tour & the 2025 Cadillac Lyriq
On Saturday, it was 1.30pm and 34 degrees, and since the action on the track was over, we shot into Melbourne city in the Lyriq to do a bit of tiki-touring. Our first stop was Hosier Lane, a street that began as a utilitarian back alley in the early 20th century. Originally called “Hosiery Lane”, it was home to hosiery factories during the 19th century and later gained a reputation as a seedy area with opium dens and brothels.
In the 1980s and 1990s, local artists started using the neglected walls as canvases for graffiti and street art, even when such art was considered illegal. This marked the beginning of Hosier Lane’s cultural shift. Then, in the early 2000s, Melbourne City Council recognised the growing street art movement and designated Hosier Lane as a legal space for graffiti and murals. This policy change attracted artists from across Australia and internationally, turning the lane into a dynamic outdoor gallery.
Every cm of wall space is covered, with one guy doing some new graffiti while we were driving through. It is a shared space with pedestrians, but the silent running of the Lyriq gave a few people a fright as we crawled up behind them. It’s worth a visit if you are in town.
We asked AI what a good place was to get car photos in Melbourne, and weirdly it suggested a Woolworths supermarket in Praphran. We took a gamble and somewhat skeptically headed there, full expecting it to be one of those times when AI gets it wrong, but it was our turn to be wrong.
The name “Prahran” derives from the Aboriginal word purraran, meaning “almost surrounded by water”, referencing its proximity to the Yarra River and former swamplands. Surveyor Robert Hoddle adopted the name in 1840 when mapping the area.
There’s two cityscapes you can easily see from the rooftop carpark, and then on the other side, an old drapery building, looking run down and yet photogenic.
Next up, it was down past the iconic Lunar Park to Marine Parade for a drive along St Kilda’s Beach. Lots of people about here, including a group of 30 women on a Hen’s Night, and all pretty drunk. They all had headphones on and would launch into song now and then. Only in Australia? It’s called Silent Disco and in Melbourne is run by the House of Hens.
Before European settlement, St Kilda’s Beach area was part of the lands of the Kulin Nation. Europeans first surveyed the coastline in 1802, describing it as swampy and unsuitable for settlement.
In 1842, Superintendent Charles La Trobe named the district after the schooner Lady of St Kilda, which was moored offshore. This marked the beginning of St Kilda’s transformation into Melbourne’s first seaside resort.
By the late 19th century, St Kilda became a leisure hub with piers, bathing houses, and entertainment venues, attracting Melbourne’s elite for seaside recreation.
2025 Cadillac Lyriq – first impressions
And what about the Cadillac Lyriq – is it worthy of being in the top ten for New Zealand Car of the Year?
The ride quality in the car is excellent, and things like fit and finish are top class. For just under NZ$100K, this car seems like a relative bargain.
I have to admit, I was quite stunned byjust how refined this car is. It’s easy to make an EV quiet as far as the motor goes, but you still have to manage things like wind noise and tyre noise. The Lyriq suppresses wind, road and tyre noise so damn well, it’s an example of doing it right.
Then there’s the looks. It’s extremely angular with sharp lines everywhere, but the proportions are spot on and the car looks superb.
It has been an excellent car for commuting to the track and back, and jaunts into Melbourne city. The column-shift gear lever is one you have to pull towards you and down (for Drive) or pull and then up (for reverse) – just like an American ICE car or pickup truck. Love it!
Add in perfect one-pedal driving and 450km of real-world range (we ran it almost flat and that’s what we got from it), and you have a sub-$100K EV SUV that should have BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Audi worried. Yes, it’s at that level.
Worthy of being in the top ten of New Zealand Car of the Year? Absolutely.
