Formula Student at Bath University was started by Nick Vaughan (now a judge in the competition) back in 2000 with BURT01 (Bath University Racing Team 01) and it was entered in the Class 3 category and then entered the Class 1 competition in 2001.

Nick Vaughan left the University in 2002 and the team was taken over by Geraint “Speed” Owen. The University continued to enter cars in Formula Student and focused on designing technically advanced cars, including two cars using turbochargers (2003 and 2004), then progressing to a supercharger in 2005 and two carbon fibre cars (2004 and 2005). These cars gave mixed results ranging from a 6th place finish with BURT03 to a 36th place finish with BURT04. The BURT05 team experimented with a carbon fibre nomex chassis and managed to develop the stiffest chassis in Bath’s history and possibly in the history of Formula Student and Formula SAE. The car won the class 3 competition and proved to be a very good car by winning the acceleration event, however due to a techical failure the car failed to finish the endurance event and could only finish 18th overall.

The perfomance in the early years didn’t meet the high expectations of the University and the people involved and so in 2006 the team was rebranded as Team Bath Racing (TBR) and the focus shifted to designing a competitive car. The first TBR car, TBR06, won the class 3 competition in 2005 and finished a respectable 13th in the 2006 class 1 competition and was the building block for future cars.

The TBR07 car was a big sucess and the car finished 6th overall but, more importantly in our opinion, we were ranked as the number 1 UK team for the first time. This achievement was beaten by the TBR08 team who not only remained the number 1 UK team but also improved our performance in the competition as a whole and finished an excellent 4th in the world.

In the 2009 Formula Student competition TBR09 equalled the achievements of the previous year and finished in 4th place overall and again as the top UK team. This achievement ends any doubt over Bath’s ability to build an excellent Formula Student car and that we are indeed the best in the UK. TBR10 aim to take this one step further and break into the top three teams and push for a first place finish in the 2010 competition.