By Damla Temizsoy
Motorsport Enthusiast

Ever since I was younger I was involved in motorsport. First it was my parents watching motorsport, and then as I grew older I started to watch motorsport and anything else that involves speed. So when I saw the opportunity to be involved in the Motorsport Club, and actually be part of the making of a racing kart (and possibly drive) I jumped at the chance.

For the past three years in Motorsport Club (also known as the Evolocity Club) we have been building electric karts to compete in the Evolocity competition. Evolocity is a competition that encourages secondary students to build, innovate and compete with electric karts and bikes. We put our karts and/or bikes through drag races, tight circuit races and more at regional and national competitions at the end of the year (you can find out more here https://evolocity.co.nz/about-evolocity/).

For our first year in the competition, we built Frankenkart. We bought the chassis off the internet and customized it for our electric motor. Last year we built Optimus Pram. We upcycled a double baby buggy and adapted it again to our electric motor and improved its safety since we would be racing in it. At last year’s competition, we won the ‘Show Award’ for the most interesting car.

This year, our team of eight decided to base this our kart (Woody) on planes from WW1. This enabled us to have more control over the design and innovation of our kart rather than buying a chassis. We have been using the wood workshop in our school to build our kart but any engineering expertise and help would be welcome.

We are also using Ardunio to measure things such as RPM, speed, voltage and other important information, and we will create a dashboard to display the information to the driver. We think we will finish the kart this month, which will give us lots of time to test it. If everything goes according to plan, the race is set to take place at the Whenuapai Air Force Base on 8 November.

Since I joined Motorsport Club in 2018 I gained so many new skills such as riveting, how to tap screw threads, how to properly use a drill, how to wire a motor and this club really developed an interest in me for mechanical/mechatronics engineering. I would highly recommend it for any students who are interested in engineering.

If you have engineering capability and/or facilities and would like to assist the team, please email Hard Materials Technology teacher Jez Scull ([email protected]).

Pictured above from left: Damla Temizsoy, Emily Y Zhu, Ruby McNamee, Yasmin Darwish, Cindy Tang, Lauren Dorrell, Rozanne Kruger.
Absent: Amena Yezdan