Manchester residents Mike Chapman (left) and Max Warnock in Chapman's garage. Warnock is on the national Forumla One Hybrid team for Lafayette College. Chapman is an alumn of Dartmouth College and works with the Hybrid Formula One league.
Max Warnock
Formula One
In some respects, it was “Manchester Week” at the 2022 Formula Hybrid + Electric Competition (FH+E) this past May at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway (NHMS) in Loudon, NH.
Manchester resident Mike Chapman runs the university-level FH+E competition, originally founded in 2006 by the students and staff of the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College in Hanover.
Joining Mike at the track this year were MERHS alum Max Warnock (Lafayette College team Vice President), Max’s dad Ken Warnock and grandfather Dave Smith. Ken and Dave both volunteered as Design Judges and Mechanical Tech Officials.
Each year, between 20 and 30 international teams work to design and build hybrid and battery-electric vehicles based on a comprehensive rule book. Max Warnock’s MERHS education and FIRST Robotics experience prepared him well for the interdisciplinary nature of FH+E. However, there were new real-world lessons that he learned.
“Engineering goes beyond your selected major,” he said. “Even if you're a mechanical engineer, you might still need to become competent in other disciplines, like electronics or programming.”
Teams find that after working for a year or more to design and build their vehicle, they still rely on the camaraderie of competing teams to make it through the week.
Max noted, “It was awesome to see all the teams that worked so hard to get to the track. Some of them fell short and didn’t finish their cars on time. But once they arrived, it was neat to see the realization dawning across ALL the teams that they weren't the only ones who found the competition really challenging.”
Ken Warnock, an alum of the Cornell Formula SAE (FSAE) internal combustion team, found that some things had changed since he was “on track” with his teammates. “The car companies used to be an industry unto themselves at FSAE.
But many of the judges at FH+E were way more tech based – coming from Tesla, BAE Systems, Kenworth, Vicor, and ePropelled.” He also noted that he saw “a hugely more diverse crowd of students than I remember from 30 years ago. There were more and better solutions but still the same passion and engagement that I felt in 1992.”
“We were so happy to be back at NHMS for 2022,” said Mike Chapman. “Due to the pandemic, we held virtual competitions in 2020 and 2021. You could say we were “VROOM by ZOOM in ’21 but Back on Track in ’22.”
Mike noted, “Our university teams, volunteers, and sponsors not only make the competition possible but the camaraderie and teamwork that they display definitely make it that much more enjoyable. This is the first time we’ve had three generations of the same family participating in the competition and that really made it particularly memorable.”
For more information on the Lafayette College Motorsports team click HERE.
For more information on competing, volunteering, or sponsoring FH+E, email Mike Chapman.
