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The new Dragon e5 single-seater. | Author: Václav ŠirokýAlthough only true motorsport enthusiasts would spot the changes from the outside, the students put in serious work on the Dragon e5 this year. “We switched to an entirely new concept. For the first time in the team’s history, we have a car with all-wheel drive, which is currently a trend in the Formula Student competition. This meant, for example, relocating the motors, which are now integrated with gearboxes directly in the wheels. We also developed a new battery pack and other safety features for managing high voltage,” lists this year’s challenges Jan Kozelek, a student of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering BUT and leader of the TU Brno Racing team.
The mentioned battery pack is the heart of the entire formula—and a very powerful one at that. “We use cells with around 3.8 volts and connect them in series. This adds up to a voltage of 600 volts, which is extremely dangerous to humans. That’s why we have many safety features protecting the cells from mechanical damage, and control units that quickly disconnect the high voltage in case of a problem to prevent risk to the driver,” explains Martin Koleňák, head of the Electric Powertrain section and student of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Communication BUT.Press conference on the new Dragon e5 single-seater. | Author: Václav ŠirokýMultidisciplinarity is becoming more and more characteristic of the team, especially since switching to an electric formula in 2021. “Our team is made up primarily of students from four key faculties: mechanical engineering students handle the mechanical parts of the car; electrical engineers build systems that bring it to life; computer scientists program the code that runs the vehicle; and we even have our own marketing section for sponsor communication, mainly composed of students from the Faculty of Business and Management,” says Kozelek, adding that the team currently has 65 members, mostly from BUT, with a few from Masaryk University.
All-wheel drive is a major experiment for the team, and they are approaching it as such. This season, they are not aiming to be the best but to verify that the new concept works. “After all, that’s the whole idea behind Formula Student: we’re not just racing, we’re learning new things—practically,” says Kozelek.
The new Dragon e5 will be more powerful and easier to handle thanks to the changes. “We can now use control algorithms like torque vectoring, which helps the driver in corners by compensating for oversteer and understeer. Another improvement is more efficient regeneration, i.e., converting braking energy back into the battery. And for the first time, we’re capable of exceeding the 80-kilowatt performance cap set by the rules, so we’ll need to limit the power. Theoretically, we’ve built a car with a power output of 140 kilowatts,” adds Koleňák.
Dragon e5
The construction of this year’s single-seater cost a total of seven million CZK. The Dragon e5 now faces about a month and a half of testing, fine-tuning, and selecting the most suitable drivers. “During the testing phase, we train them directly in the car and collect a lot of data about their driving, which helps us train and select the best,” says Kozelek. In July and August, the team will head to international races in Hungary, Croatia, and the Czech circuit in Most.
New facilities for young talents
And one more task awaits the team: soon, the students will have to vacate their workshop. The entire building is due for reconstruction and transformation into the BUT Student Center. “It will be an open workshop for student teams. It will include office and teaching facilities, and most importantly, a large workshop equipped with the necessary technology. Our teams attract many young talents, and considering their excellent results in international competitions, they certainly deserve new facilities,” says Petr Tesař, secretary of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering. Most of the 50-million CZK modernization will be funded by a grant from the European Regional Development Fund, with the rest covered by BUT’s budget.Visualization of the Student Center (Radko Květ Architectural Office)“Working in temporary premises will be one of the challenges of the next season. But we’re looking forward to something truly unique being built—no other team, as far as I know, has anything like it. Moreover, we were able to partially adapt the project to our needs,” says Kozelek, adding that the Student Center won’t serve just the formula team, but also, for example, the Chicken Wings team, which builds small aircraft and also participates in international competitions (they recently took third place in March in the USA in the SAE Aero Design competition). “Each team won’t need its own lathe—we’ll have one well-equipped machining center, and so on. Overall, this should increase efficiency and cooperation between teams, which will again be a great showcase not only for the faculty but the whole university,” concludes Kozelek.
Student team TU Brno Racing was founded at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at BUT in 2010. In 2021, students ended the production of combustion engine single-seaters with the 10th model Dragon X and also introduced the first electric formula model, Dragon e1. TU Brno Racing is the largest student team at BUT, with 65 students participating this year in the development, manufacturing, and operation of the team. In the 2022/2023 racing season, the team placed 15th in the electric formula category in the global ranking of three hundred teams with their Dragon e3 model.
More about the team at tubrnoracing.cz.
Team contact:
Jan Kozelek | Team Leader | 604 171 380 | Jan.Kozelek@vutbr.czSource: Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, BUT