uOttawa engineering students revving up for car design competition with 120 universities

Students at the University of Ottawa have designed and built an F1 car to race against schools in Canada and the U.S. CTV’s Camille Wilson got the first look.

A group of University of Ottawa engineering students unveiled their 2026 Formula SAE race car ahead of the 2026 competitive season.

The fully student-designed and built open-wheel car was produced from scratch by more than 35 engineering students with thousands of hours of design, fabrication, testing and dedication.

Formula SAE is a design competition for engineering students.

The uOttawa Formula SAE Team will compete in the Formula SAE university car competitions in Michigan alongside 120 teams from universities across Canada and the United States.

“I’ve spent a lot of time in school, a lot of time learning a lot of things from books. It was really exciting for me to be able to work on something with my hands and implement all the engineering I’ve been doing for all these years,” said Ayham Alakhras, engineering student.

This year marks the team’s 10th year anniversary building cars and competing.

“Our car is very special. We’re a very small team of engineering students. We don’t have the resources of other schools, but we still have the technical knowledge and the skills to really excel at our competition,” Kobe Belanger, team captain of the Formula uOttawa SAE Team, said. “I think we have some pretty neat innovations on our car that some teams don’t have. That kind of gives us a little bit of an edge.”

Thousands of hours are spent in the shop outside of class to design, fabricate and test the vehicle. The program is entirely voluntary and students don’t get any school credit — they say they are doing it for their passion for engineering.

“It feels really rewarding. It’s something in your classes, you don’t really get to do. You don’t really apply what you’re learning. Then this is a way you can do that. It makes classes easier too because while I’m learning stuff, I’m like ‘oh I could apply that in a certain way.’ It makes going to classes a little bit easier,” says Faran Rashid, engineering student.

The first competition takes place between May 11 to 18.

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