Problem It Solves: 

Student motorsport teams such as SAE Baja, Formula Student, and Go-Kart lose important technical experience annually as senior students graduate. They frequently lose design decisions, test data, contacts with suppliers, and interpretation of the rules. The outcome is that new members waste weeks learning the ropes again, repeat the same mistakes, and end up consuming limited budgets on trial and error.

Key issues include:

• Scattered Data → CAD files, CFD/FEA results, BOMs, telemetry, and supplier info are stored in disconnected folders, drives, or chats.

• Loss of Design Rationale → Students see the final geometry but not why it was chosen (trade-offs between weight, manufacturability, downforce, and rules).

• High Onboarding Time → New engineers struggle to understand naming conventions, material picks, and past test failures.

• Rules & Compliance Drift → Rulebooks change annually, but no system tracks updates or maps them to subsystems.

• Supplier Memory Lost → Vendor details and procurement insights vanish, forcing every team to start supplier negotiations from zero.

This leads to wasted time, higher costs, and slower innovation—all while competitions demand more technical rigor each year.

Current Market Gap:

Although solutions such as Notion, Google Drive, or Confluence are available, they are generic and do not have motorsport workflows. They do not fit into CAD/CFD/FEA tools, telemetry data, and rulebooks, and they offer no organized way of knowledge transfer. What’s missing is a student-friendly, motorsport-specific knowledge management platform that captures technical decisions, integrates engineering data, and ensures continuity between batches.

My Solution: RaceVault

A digital knowledge-transfer and project management platform designed specifically for student motorsport teams.

Core Features:

• Subsystem Workspaces → Prebuilt templates for Aero, Suspension, Powertrain, Chassis, and Electronics with standardized fields (constraints, load cases, validation tests).

• Decision Graphs → Every design choice is linked to alternatives considered, simulations, trade-offs, and final reasoning.

• Data Integration → Connects with CAD/PDM, CFD/FEA logs, DAQ/telemetry, and BOM spreadsheets; auto-tags and links artifacts.

• Rules Diff Engine → Upload new rulebook; system highlights changes, flags impacted subsystems, and assigns tasks.

• Test Data Locker → Stores telemetry, skidpad results, cooling tests, and endurance logs—tagged by driver, setup, and track conditions.

• Supplier & BOM Manager → Central database of vendor contacts, quotes, lead times, QA notes, and part history.

• Onboarding Tracks → Role-based learning modules (e.g., “Aero Newbie Path”) pulling best examples from past seasons.

• AI Copilot → Private AI that answers team-specific queries like “Why did we pick 4130 steel for A-arms last year?” or “What failed in endurance at 70 km/h?”

Who Benefits:

• Student Teams → Save time, avoid repeating mistakes, and design faster with historical insights.

• New Members → Onboard quickly with structured training and access to past rationale.

• Universities → Stronger performance in competitions, improved safety compliance, and better return on funding.

• Alumni & Sponsors → Continued visibility and assurance that their past contributions are preserved and built upon.

• Society → Fosters engineering excellence and innovation by ensuring that student projects evolve year after year instead of restarting from zero

Business Model:

RaceVault uses a tiered access scheme that is student-friendly and affordable. At the first tier, Freemium Access will enable all teams to utilize the basic features, including templates, structured storage, and onboarding tracks, entirely without fee implementation. In those teams desiring advanced functionalities, the Pro Subscription offers the team CAD and telemetry integration, the Rules Diff Engine, Supplier Manager, and the AI Copilot, among others, at a modest seasonal price. University Packages, to accommodate multiple-club institutions, provide discounted packages to ensure that a single license is used to benefit SAE, FSAE, and Baja teams. Lastly, alumni or sponsors via the Alumni Sponsorship Mode can sponsor team subscriptions directly and receive reports and a view of how their support is making the next generation of engineers successful.

Why This Matters To Me: 

Being a student of Aerospace engineering, an active participant in my university's SAE Baja club, I have come to know during my second year how fragile team knowledge can be. A considerable section of our club constitutes seniors who will graduate this year or next, and with them, much of the useful experience, technical information, and contacts with suppliers will also be lost. The current team is not the only one to suffer this loss, but we who will remain and continue racing in the future will suffer setbacks that will be felt over the long term. With no organized means of preservation of what our seniors know, we tend to make the same mistakes, waste budgets on trial and error, and waste weeks scouring the streets to retrieve some information that was supposed to be at our fingertips.

RaceVault is not merely a tool; it is the insurance of my team in the future. By preserving knowledge and data through every season, it ensures we spend less time retracing old steps and more time innovating, testing, and winning.