IT Services

A trackside laptop

Formula Student is an annual engineering competition held in the UK in which student teams from around the world design, build, test, and race small-scale formula style racing cars. Mobil 1 Team Sussex are the University of Sussex’s Formula Student Team; they have been competing in the competition since 2005.

The team identified a need for a laptop tough enough to be used trackside at Silverstone and capable of many tasks including

• calibrating engine sensors and creating an engine “map”
• collecting live telemetry data at racing events
• performing dynamic simulations of car parts
• perform computational fluid dynamic simulation of the bodywork

The team approached IT Services for advice – both with respect to the type of laptop that would be suitable and the procurement options open to them. The team offer several tiers of sponsorship and hoped that they might be able to obtain the laptop via this route.

Armed with the information provided to them by the team, IT Services approached Dell, their current preferred supplier of PCs, to find out whether they would be interested in supplying a laptop as part of a sponsorship deal. Dell agreed to the idea and IT Services subsequently negotiated the specification and hardware enhancements that the trackside laptop would need.

In the end the agreed model was a Dell Latitude E6430 ATG, a semi-rugged model designed for maximum performance in outdoor environments. This was supplied by Dell, set up by IT Services and delivered to the team before the end of February 2013.