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I recently had the privilege of going down to Sydney for a weeklong internship to work with UNSW's Sunswift Racing Team.
My time there wasn't so much a "university" busy week, but a "Sunswift" busy week, which meant that I didn't really learn much about engineering but rather I did a lot of mechanical work on the car. This is because 99% of the engineering work on the car had already been done, but all that needed to be finished off was putting the car together and final touches. It would have been good to do some engineering work with the students, but that’s just the reality of the situation. There was a lot of electrical engineering work being done on the car, however, and although I would love to learn how to code one day, I have absolutely no idea how it works right now.
We also went out to Sydney Motorsport Park for a test day on the Wednesday, but it poured down all day so we didn't get any laps in, as the car isn't waterproof.
Sunswift make a battery-electric solar powered racecar that competes in the biannual Bridgestone World Solar Challenge race from Darwin to Adelaide. At the time of writing, they are the reigning champions from the last event (2023), and are about to compete, with the race starting on the 24th of August.
One of the main highlights of the week was getting to know Richard Hopkins. Richard is a professor of practice at UNSW, and the Team Principal of Sunswift Racing. Richard has just about as complete of a resume as you can have in motorsport. He worked as a mechanic for the McLaren F1 team in the 1990s, before moving into a logistic managing role within the team. He then moved to RedBull Racing, where he was the Head of Operations for the team, and was influential in turning the team from backmarkers to four time double world champions.
I found that we are both very similar in the way that we both work and think. This was quite exciting as I don't find many people this similar to myself, but Richard's reputation, the places he's been and the thing's he's done leads me to think I'm on the right track and have what it takes to get there and beyond someday.
(Above) I got a tour of the UNSW mechanical engineering facilities while there.
From left to right: Carbon fibre making robot, the university's wind tunnel, and the Redback Racing Formula SAE car.
The tour was conducted by Alex, who recently finished his PhD in mechanical engineering. For his PhD, he was researching and experimenting with hydrogen fuel cell technologies.
UNSW campus
I also got the opportunity to attend a lecture on aerodynamics on the Friday. They were doing a case study on the two Boeing 737 Max’s that crashed in late 2018/ early 2019. I was surprised with how engaged I was in the lecture despite not being specifically interested in the topic. I don’t think that there was anything in particular that made the lecture engaging, but I think when the lecturer first said what they were talking about, I was a little I was a little disappointed that they weren’t learning about something relevant to my interests or my project, but I think I was still engaged because I seemingly love learning about engineering in general, particularly mechanical. The key point that stood out to me from the study was that Boeing had only used one angle of attack sensor out of the two rear ailerons/ trim tabs, which I thought was a shockingly piece of cost cutting, that ultimately cost the lives of over 400 people.
There were a couple of times throughout the week where I helped the university students to learn. Richard did say before the week that this might happen, but I honestly thought he was just joking. I must say though, when I saw how much hands-on mechanical work the students were doing, I didn’t have very high hopes. But to their credit, there were certainly some students who did very well with this area.
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