Mechanical Engineering and Motorsport

Oxford Brookes has a long standing reputation for delivering top-quality engineering and motorsport degrees. Turn your passion for road cars, race cars or design into career ambitions on our courses. Our links with industry-leading firms and Formula 1 give you access to outstanding work placements. Gain hands-on experience on the UK’s no.1 Formula Student team, Oxford Brookes Racing (OBR) and help design and build the team’s car for racing competitions.

Top 3 reasons to study with us

1

Our motorsport, automotive and mechanical engineering courses are fully accredited by the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) and the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) on behalf of the Engineering Council. This includes an accredited placement year by the IMechE.

2

You’ll be using industry-standard facilities, including engine test cells and a four-post shaker rig for analysing rigid body and vehicle dynamics.

3

Students benefit from our strong links with F1 teams, including work placements and recruitment opportunities.

Oxford Brookes Racing

OBR car launch at Porsche 2017

As an award-winning Formula Student team it is our mission to build a mulit-year legacy as a competitive, high quality team.

Formula Student is run by the Institute for Mechanical Engineers, and is an annual student engineering competition held in the UK. Student teams from around the world design, build, test and race their small-scale, formula style racing car. 

Oxford Brookes Racing (OBR) was founded in 1999 to compete in Formula Student. We have developed and grown into one of Europe’s elite Formula Student teams. We've collected seven UK Top Team awards along the way; more than any other university. 

It's our mission to build a multi-year legacy as a competitive, high quality team. As well as develop versatile graduates able to excel in a high performance team. We nurture and help develop high quality talent, regardless of what you’re studying or which year you’re in. 

After a long and successful history of combustion entries in the Formula Student competition, we made the shift to electric for the 2021 season.

Facilities

The Auto lab is home to Jenson Button’s 2003 BAR Formula 1 car, J.J. Lehto's winning Formula 3 car, Kimi Raikkonen’s Formula Renault, an Indy car, an electric BMW Mini and a BMW 1 series.

  • A variety of engines
  • Four-post rig for chassis analysis
  • Dynamics Fluids
  • Mechanical testing and stress

Industrial placements

Students talking at work placement fair

Our industrial placement programme has been commended by professional bodies as a model of excellence. We have excellent industrial links and placement opportunities with local automotive and product manufacturing companies.

Student stories