Tipperary's Premier STEM Racing Competition Team
Just as a supernova marks the explosive transformation of a dying star into something magnificent and powerful, Nova Racing represents the explosive fusion of innovation, engineering, and competition.
We are a team of 6 dedicated students from Tipperary, Ireland, pushing the boundaries of what's possible when brilliant minds collide with cutting-edge technology.
The story behind our brand begins in 2023 when we entered the "F1 for Schools" competition, where we developed the brand of Bullet Racing. As a team we have evolved and developed over the years. From Bullet to Inferno and finally to NOVA, our current team. Through feedback and teamwork we have been allowed to become who we are today.
With experience competing in STEM Racing Competitions since 2023, we've learned, grown, and evolved. Now in Season 25-26, we're taking our passion to the next level—building faster, smarter, and stronger than ever before.
E2T is committed to promoting sustainable energy & protecting our planet with their innovation, technology and clean energy solutions. Their support enables us to pursue excellence in STEM education and competition.
Studytok is a mobile learning app that aims to make studying more engaging by using AI driven content with a similar format to the likes of TikTok and Instagram. Winner of the Innovation award at the Student Enterprise Program in 2025.
Their Mission: Innovation & transition is a common theme promoting sustainable energy & protecting our planet with their innovation, technology and clean energy solutions.
Donal T. Ryan Solicitors is a successful and reputable law firm with offices in our areas of Cashel and Cahir. They provide a wide range of legal services and were winners of the Munster Property Law Firm of the Year in 2023.
Our team developed a focused sponsorship strategy to secure funding and build professional partnerships that supported every year of our project. We began by identifying local businesses and larger companies whose values aligned with innovation, STEM, and engineering.
We created professional sponsorship proposals and presentations outlining the benefits sponsors would receive, such as logo placement on our car, uniforms, and social media posts. Maintaining regular communication and expressing our appreciation helped and will help us build long-term relationships rather than just one-time donations.
As part of our sponsorship campaign we offered the companies we reached out to a set of sponsorship packages. These included bronze, silver, gold and platinum with each package offering a different level of return. This gives the sponsors choice so they can choose their involvement depending on their companies goals.
We wanted a centralised place online where people could find information on us and who we are. We talked it through and all agreed that whilst social medias were good for in the moment events, for more general information on who we are, a website would be much more suitable.
Follow us on social media: @nova_racing4
Help us reach the stars—€4,500 for fabrication alone, €5,000+ total to build our dream machine
Basic components, wheels, chassis materials
Professional machining, custom car parts, precision tools
Themed uniforms, team gear, professional branding
6 Minds. One Mission. Infinite Possibilities.
Skills: Solidworks, Fusion 360, Onshape, Photoshop
Skills: Solidworks, Fusion 360, Canva, Jira
Skills: Solidworks, Fusion 360, Excel, TikTok
Matthew is the leader when it comes to marketing and sponsorship. He has a huge interest in it, clearly shown by what he has done for our team. He set-up our Instagram, Linked-in and Twitter. His determination for sponsorship is proven as well. He has sent out various e-mails to companies like E2T, in order to meet together and encourage sponsorship.
Skills: Solidworks, Fusion 360, Jira, TikTok
Skills: Solidworks, Fusion 360, Jira
Darragh's purpose in the group is to organize and manage the project workflow.
Skills: Solidworks, Fusion 360, Canva
To ensure that we communicated effectively throughout the project, we planned to make message groups on apps like WhatsApp and Microsoft teams. By doing this it has allowed us to stay in touch with each other both in and outside of school. We also planned weekly meetings so we could catch up with each other on the work we had done. By keeping our communication consistent and effective it allowed us to address issues early and keep our team fully informed at all times.
To launch our F1 in Schools project, we are implementing a robust project management framework leveraging Jira. Our first action was to define the project scope, breaking down key deliverables like the car design portfolios into epics and specific user stories. Within Jira, each team member is assigned tasks, clarifying individual responsibilities and ensuring full accountability. We utilize two-week sprints to set clear, short-term goals and monitor our progress against the project timeline using Jira's dashboards.
We organized scheduled meetings every Monday, with the occasional Friday when needed, to keep track of where everyone is and to solve problems that come up. We kept the minutes of each meeting available to us. This helped with organisation, as records of what was said, agreed, and planned were all kept. These meetings ensured complete transparency and made sure our campaign is structured for success from day one.
Our new design journey began with Onshape brainstorming sessions where we discussed how each new version of the car could improve on previous models. We produced rough sketches to explore creative ideas and proportions, taking inspiration from real Formula 1 cars and their aerodynamic features.
After reviewing Stem Racing regulations, we transitioned from sketches to computer-aided design (CAD) to begin refining our concept. During this stage, we also researched airflow principles, downforce generation, and the impact of surface geometry on drag. This research helped us identify which elements of previous models were performing well and which areas required redesign.
We started modelling our concepts using Onshape, as its familiar platform from previous Junior Cycle projects allowed us to rapidly explore ideas, test proportions, and visualise potential aspects. Once we established our initial concept, we moved to SolidWorks for more advanced modelling.
SolidWorks was chosen due to its availability in school and its powerful aerodynamic simulation capabilities. Here, we used Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to assess and improve airflow around the car.
As we refined our ideas, we developed multiple early sketches to visualise different concepts for the front wing, rear wing, and body curvature. This allowed us to compare ideas quickly and identify which shapes had the potential to create smoother airflow and greater stability. These early sketches became the foundation for our CAD modelling process.
Throughout the modelling process, we created numerous variations, adjusting curvature, wing angles, and surface smoothness. Each modification was tested virtually to evaluate its impact on drag and stability. This iterative workflow helped us gradually refine the design into a more streamlined and aerodynamic car.
We also experimented with different materials and shell thicknesses to assess weight distribution and structural integrity, ensuring that the model complied with competition regulations while still maintaining high performance.
To refine our ideas further, we developed several alternative wing configurations in SolidWorks before finalising our concept. In the first variation, we focused on drag reduction, creating our design with the purpose of air flowing as straight through the design as possible. We began to design the concept of using the wing aerodynamics to reduce drag in other places.
In the second variation, we focused on reducing the drag caused by the wheels of the car. This design focused on redirecting the airflow over the wheels, in the hope that the drag caused by redirecting the air would be lower than the drag caused by air hitting the wheels whilst trying to move in the opposite direction.
To evaluate these variations, we used CFD to compare their aerodynamic performance. This allowed us to identify which designs offered the smoothest airflow paths, reduced turbulence, and provided better consistency at high speeds.
We also considered manufacturing practicality—some designs, while aerodynamically strong, contained complex shapes that would be difficult to 3D-print and CNC accurately. Balancing performance with manufacturability played an important role in choosing our final design direction.
These alternatives later influenced our prototype by helping us understand how different wing angles, body shapes, and wheel covers affected drag, lift, and overall performance.
Our main prototype was created in SolidWorks with a focus on achieving airflow efficiency. The model, like the rear wing is designed to direct air around it with at least drag as possible, reducing drag and improving stability. This design approach was crucial to identifying how each aerodynamic surface contributed to overall performance. During prototyping, we also examined the underbody airflow, ensuring that the base of the model was as smooth as possible to minimise turbulence. We introduced slight curvature adjustments to optimise the pressure zones under the car, improving straight-line stability.
Once the prototype was complete, we generated multiple 3D renders from different angles to assess the proportions visually. This helped us finalise the design before manufacturing. We also ran more CFD tests on the completed prototype to confirm that the improvements made throughout the development process translated into measurable aerodynamic gains.
This stage provided us with a near-final visualisation of the car and allowed us to predict its performance before moving on to physical production and further testing.
2025
Officially established as Nova Racing with 6 dedicated team members from Tipperary, ready to take on the world.
2024
Competed in the STEM Racing Competition, gaining invaluable experience and refining our engineering skills.
2023
Our journey began—entering the STEM Racing Competition for the first time and discovering our passion for engineering excellence.
To optimize aerodynamic efficiency we will need to apply several different aerodynamic concepts to our car which will aid in increasing our cars race performance while also complying with the technical regulations of the competition. The concepts we will use to optimise our cars aerodynamic efficiency:
This is the vertical aerodynamic force that works against lift and pushes the car down as it travels forward. It is generated by the shape of the car and the air that passes over and under the car.
High down force creates high grip and stability which is important for our car to stay straight in the race. But it can also slow down the car by reducing its top speed.
Taking these points into consideration we want to try find the perfect balance of downforce to keep our car stable and with good grip and not affect the topspeed significantly.
This effect is a phenomenon in fluid dynamics where gasses such as air or fluids will have the tendency to follow the contour of a curved surface instead of flowing straight off.
By applying this concept we cause high speed air flowing off our car to "stick" to the cars body this will then accelerate the airflow which will create a low pressure area which will pull the car down creating downforce increasing our grip and stability.
We will apply this concept to our car by applying curved surfaces to our car, we can do this by applying side pods and diffusers to the car.
This effect occurs when spinning objects travel through the air causing differences in pressure on opposite sides of the surfaces.
The spinning motion can cause air to move at different speeds at different sides of the the surfaces, this causes a lift force perpindicular to the direction the air is travelling in, we want to minimise as it can destabilize the car causing it to go of route and slow the car down.
This effect occurs when air flows into a narrowed area causing the air's velocity to increase and the static pressure to decrease as the air constricts.
By creating diffusers below the car, we can constrict the air, causing the air to accelerate and create a low downforce without significantly increasing the drag, which will stabilise the car without decreasing our top speed.
The wheel 'aerodynamics' is based on reducing drag and turbulence from the wheels, helping increase top speed and stability.
To do this we will try to divert airflow around the wheels. This will apply to the Magnus effect by reducing the turbulent air and lift force.
Another aspect we must look at is our front wing design and flow it will manipulate airflow to suit our needs. Around the wheels, we can decide to go for a, minimalist design or a more protruding design that will alter airflow more, but may also increase the drag on the front wing itself.
The design for manipulating the air will reduce drag and turbulence created by the wheel but will also have a high drag coefficient while the minamlist design will have a low drag coefficient but there will be more drag and turbulence created by the wheels.