September 12, 2012, Updated September 11, 2012

University undergraduates from across the world will meet in Italy this weekend for a high adrenaline car race meant to show off the next generation of world-class engineers and designers. Israel’s Formula SAE race team includes students from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev’s (BGU) Mechanical Engineering Department and Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design’s Industrial Design Department.

Earlier this week, students, lecturers, sponsors and friends watched the highly-specialized, powerful race car make its successful test drive around a race track in Kochav Yair.

“We believe we have created a race car that will be able to compete with the best Formula SAE teams around the world and we look forward to showing our race car in Italy,” said BGU team leader Ben Levitan.

The Formula SAE Italy competition kicks off at the “Riccardo Paletti” Circuit in Varano de’ Melegari (PR) on Friday (September 14) and continues through Monday (September 17).

The contest challenges teams of university undergraduate and graduate students to conceive, design and compete with small, formula style, autocross racing cars.

BGU took part in the contest last year and came in 15th overall out of 57 teams. This year, in conjunction with Bezalel, the team is hoping to do better.
BGU was in charge of the engineering side of the project while Bezalel was responsible for the style and design.

“We employed all the aerodynamic knowledge and research that was provided to us by the Ben-Gurion team,” says Bezalel’s Dori Regev, a senior lecturer in the Industrial Design Department, who developed a car design course especially for this project.

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