The NUST Formula Student Team is a team of crazy, workaholic students who make formula student cars. While this is well known about us, what normally doesn’t get the highlights is how we do it. I aim to take you on a very small journey into the team’s work, a journey which seems very ordinary at the outset but which is extraordinary in terms of the final destination it leads to.

A DAY AT THE OFFICE

The NFST office is the hub of our activities. It is a busy place, teeming with members doing research, or working on the vehicle’s CAD models or performing simulations or calling companies to pitch the idea of our work and project. While the technical team members make themselves comfortable in any corner of the room, the marketing members could be found dispersed outside the office making calls and sending emails.

Our day officially begins at 3 pm as we all gather in the big room that has become our small home. That office is where we have our most heated team discussions, our lightest moments of humour, all our serious engineering and business plan making and never to forget, all those heartfelt monthly birthday celebrations. The day starts at 3 but the office isn’t really vacated till 6 or 7 in the evening and during crazy workload times you’ll find members working till 10 in the night there. I think these hardcore work ethics are the reason why we move ahead every obstacle and struggle in our way towards progression and achievement of our goals.

The dull painted walls of the room are hidden behind photo frames narrating a story which started 6 years ago. Beaming faces of young men and women standing with their formula car marvel at the glorious Silverstone circuit and the beautiful Hockenheimring track. Images of all these people with expressions that tell stories of their hardwork and their pride at representing the country on the grounds of science and technology. In the midst of all this is the picture of Captain Nadeem Ahmed Shaheed, the man who believed in us and believed in the aims we said we could achieve. The man the team will never forget.

A DAY AT THE GARAGE

AThe garage is what we call the place where we manufacture and build our car from scratch. It is the place with a crazy amount of cool engineering tools. Present in the garage at the moment is our most recent car, NAS 18, undergoing a disassembly process, while the NAS 19 undergoing manufacturing. This is the place that stays awake all night and day because you’ll always find someone opening upparts or working on machines. This is the place of mobility and hard work, resilience and strength. As you lift the heavy steel gates of that garage, the smell of congested air immediately greets your olfactory. Followed by a mixture of grease, oil and metal.

The entire space gives an aura of unlimited potential within its small interior. The walls very mildly scratched give it life. The garage communicates its history of success, sheer will, times of utter gloom and lastly of fun. The place is inviting, with tools only a few steps away from you. An old yet firm steel table greets you as one moves towards the rear of the garage, a lot of pounding of metal and testing of parts has occurred on it. As one turns their back towards the mouth of this suffocating space of innovation, you see what the entire year will look like. It'll be dark, gloomy, utterly hopeless at times but through all of it you will make it to the light at the end of the tunnel. That is what our garage is. It's hope.