News Desk |
An all-girls team, for the first time in Pakistan builds a formula car from scratch, to enter into a competition at an international level.
The unique or the other-factor about this story is that girls usually thrive but don’t get recognition or don’t make it to the international platform in this field.
Designed and build at the hands of students of National University of Science and Technology, NUST, Islamabad, H-12 campus, this formula car’s main purpose was to enter into a European Competition, held every year.
Formula Student is a competition held in the U.K., to celebrate engineering capabilities of students all around the world. This competition provides students with an opportunity to utilize an international platform, to showcase their work and compete on a global level where international teams build small-scale Formula style racing cars in order to compete against each other. This year’s competition, International Formula Student competition will be held in Silverstone, England, scheduled from 13th to 15th July.
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Participants will be evaluated based on the car’s fuel economy, endurance, acceleration, design dynamics, skid pad and more.
The team which has built this Formula-1 car, is an all-girls team, consisting of 15 members. “Team Auj”, successfully registered as a participant and are scheduled to depart for UK, on the 9th of July, 2018.
The team Auj, led by Azka Athar comprises of Fatima Sohail, Wardah Jamal, Laiba Rodyna, Cybil Braganza, Sabah Zaman, Aatrah Rauf Shaikh, Zobia Noor, Syeda Al Aima Zahra and Harim Akhtar.
This team built a formula car from scratch without any mechanical engineer on the team. All members were from different disciplines. This team consisted of electrical engineers, industrial designers and members from the business management department.
In a conversation with Wardah Jamal, Marketing Manager of the team, she stated that “it was the first all-girls team which would represent Pakistan in the competition”, with the car no. 199.
She also told the sources that all team members were from NUST, who were selected for this competition on the basis of the University’s BLC (Business Logic Case). This contained the details of the project sales, costs, volume, target market and the success rate of the project of a larger scale.
Participants will be evaluated based on the car’s fuel economy, endurance, acceleration, design dynamics, skid pad and more.
“Due to the excellence of BLC we cleared stage one of the competition,” she added.
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The major obstacle for this team was the lack of financial funds. Laila Khan, working in the Prime Minister’s office drew the then PM Shahid Khaqan Abbasi’s attention towards this issue and then the team was funded by PM office.
This team attracted many sponsors, Automark, Wild Wings, Autocom, Syed Flour Mills and Ricardo.
This initiative taken by young students reflect women’s willingness to participate in the motor-sports industry is gaining momentum. The unique or the other-factor about this story is that girls usually thrive but don’t get recognition or don’t make it to the international platform in this field.
Indeed, these girls aim at women empowerment and breaking stereotypes in this society. This inspires the society by encouraging able women to put their knowledge and creativity to a better, pragmatic use.
This team also aims at encouraging Pakistani women to involve themselves in projects that are usually restricted to the male gender and stretch their wings, allowing them to become more independent.
Demonstration of such exemplary skills to an international audience through Formula Student, indeed enables the world to see the real capability of Pakistani women.
“We really hope to have more people support women in Pakistan and also introduce our country to collaborative design. We want everyone, not only women, to not let a paper dictate what you can and cannot do.”- Team Auj