Introduce your team briefly
Established in 2010, Bimasakti is the first student formula team in Indonesia. Although we are still considered as a young team compared to other counterparts in the world, our passion to keep learning and improving our team drives us to improve our understanding of motorsport engineering. We are filled with compassionate students who dedicated their time in the midst of their hectic college schedule to build a new world class student formula car. Because of our circumstances, we do university activities in the morning to afternoon and continue to build our car in the evening, six days a week.
Tell us about your team’s history with Formula Student
After the declining strikethrough of the Indonesian national student go-karting championship, our team decided to pursue a higher level of competition. We established the formula student team in 2010 and competed for the first time in Formula Student Japan in 2011. We were able to compete in every event without penalty in Formula Student Japan 2018. Two years of pandemic didn’t stop us from improving our team’s performance. In 2020, we participated in FSAE Australasia 2020. While in 2021, we participated in Formula Bharat Virtuals 2021. We managed to achieve several awards from both competitions. After 2 years of joining the online Formula Student Competition due to COVID-19 pandemic, this year will be the first time we are able to compete in an offline Formula Student Competition. We will definitely come back stronger this year.
What does joining Formula Student Netherlands mean to you?
Our participation in Formula Student Netherlands will be our first breakthrough to get out of our comfort zone and participate in a competition with different circumstances than what we are used to. This competition will also become the first time for any Indonesian Formula Student Team to compete outside Formula Student Japan.
What are your main goals for this year?
Since this will be our first time competing in Formula Student Netherlands, our main goal for this year is to give our best effort in order to offer a good level of competitiveness in Formula Student Netherlands. We targeted our team to achieve Top 5 Business Presentation, Top 10 Engineering Design, Top 10 Cost and Manufacturing, and Top 10 Overall Static Event. We also targeted our team to accomplish Class A Endurance, Top 10 Skidpad Event, Top 20 Acceleration, and Top 25 Autocross.
What made you think of/choose FSN?
Being accepted in three Formula Student Events, we are more than willing to participate in more than one event. But with the limited funding we have, we can only participate in one Formula Student Event. We chose to participate in Formula Student Netherlands because we have a lot of alumni in the Netherlands that will guide us and give generous support for our competition.
What makes you different from the other teams?
Bimasakti Racing Team is a team with quite a few members and limited funding, but even with our limitations, we managed ourselves to successfully create a vehicle with competitive performance. Our passion for automotive is not the only thing that drives us to keep improving our research and performance, but our nationalism also becomes our biggest motivation to become an accomplished team and make the Indonesian nation proud internationally.
What is your most significant achievement in Formula Student so far?
3rd Business Presentation in Formula Student Japan 2018
Top 8 Skidpad Event in Formula Student Japan 2019
Do you think there are any positive outcomes for the competition from the current situation?
Definitely. With all the struggles we faced during the pandemic, at last, the pandemic gives us a chance to rethink the concept of our car and refine the engineering quality of our car.
What can the Formula Student organising bodies do to help the struggling teams due to the recent events?
Our team’s funding has always been one of the biggest struggles we faced throughout the year. Formula Student teams in several countries, especially in Indonesia, are continuously facing a financial struggle due to lack of society’s support for our community. This situation explains the gap between the foreign team and the Indonesian team. For example, the European Formula Student teams can participate in 3-5 events per year, while the Indonesian Formula Student teams are struggling to participate even in just one event.
Did your team help your local society with the COVID-19 situation?
Yes. Our research, development, and goals have always been dedicated to society. During the pandemic, we built hand sanitizer dispensers and sinks to support society’s clean and healthy environment. As the oldest formula student team in Indonesia, we also try to share as much information and knowledge as possible with other Indonesianuniversities who want to develop their student formula teams.
Describe your car in three words
Keep Accelerating Forward
You can follow Bimasakti Racing Team for more updates and news on their social media platforms:
Instagram: @bimasaktiugm
Facebook: @bimasakti.fsae.ugm
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/bimasakti-fsae-ugm/
Website: https://bimasakti.ft.ugm.ac.id/
We look forward to welcoming the team to the track!