Coatings specialist Zircotec lent its technical and commercial support to 10 teams at Formula Student 2011 held at Silverstone last weekend. The firm’s ceramic coatings were used by a number of the participants including University of Hertfordshire, Coventry University and Cambridge, the latter adopting Zircotec’s patented carbon composite coating to protect a composite bulkhead.
“Zircotec believes that Formula Student is an extremely worthwhile activity, helping participants to understand and implement the technologies of today’s contemporary race cars,” says Zircotec’s managing director Terry Graham. “We now offer a growing number of teams our coating service as a component part of a formal sponsorship package. Teams have access to our coatings and other products and in return we require them to provide a technical report of the results achieved. This way we can both learn from the use of the coating on the car.”
exhaust and bulkhead coating – 10 teams in F1 are using Zircotec’s composite coating
Zircotec’s coatings are appreciated by many of the teams using motorbike engines that tend to run hot in the Formula Student installation. “We are coating exhausts that keep heat inside the exhaust to prevent damage to surrounding components as well as supplying heat resistant foils to protect fuel lines, batteries and the driver,” says Graham. “This year we also coated a composite bulkhead and we expect to see more of these lightweight materials requiring protection in future Formula Student cars.”
Zircotec is equally keen to expand links with International universities and used this year’s event at Silverstone to meet teams from Italy, Australia, Germany, France and Holland. “We visited most of the teams during the week and provided samples of our ZircoFlex foil for them to solve last minute heat issues,” adds Graham. “The level of engineering on these cars is often outstanding and we welcome further co-operation with universities outside of the UK in the coming years.”
ZircoFlex – 9 F1 teams are using ZircoFlex this year
More information:
http://www.brunelracing.co.uk/
Footnote: I attended the Formula Student Finals at Silverstone last weekend. I will post a brief summary and gallery later this week.
Scarbsf1's Blog 
Seems like a very good opportunity for zircotec to get in contact with future motorsport engineers, and a great experience for these formula student team members to get experience with their materials. It seems likely that use of them will only increase.
We (Brunel Racing) are one of the teams using the Zircotec coating. It’s great to see Zircotec and Formula Student get a mention, especially when two of the pictures are of our car!
We’re really grateful to Zircotec and what they’ve provided us with, and we hope the partnership we’ve built up with them over the years will continue into the future.
ARGH – I hate seeing Jubilee clips as clamps for the exhaust! (image 3). They don’t work too well under high exhaust temperature!
Brett,
We know it’s a bad use of a Jubilee clip, and I’m pretty sure we’ve now got the right clip to replace it.
I actually followed Brunel’s FStudent team to a test day early last year to write a story about them, and even five inches of snow on the ground didn’t stop them testing the car! That’s dedication for you
Hi there. As a member of the Cardiff Racing team in Formula Student and a user of Zircotec products, could we get a link to our website on this article please?
http://www.cardiffracing.co.uk
Must say its great to see Formula Student having a mention and I hope that many people research it and come to see the event next year for some very exciting racing!