The DJSR Years: Building Race Cars with DJS Racing

Before ERPs and costing engines, there was a race car. From 2014 to 2017 I was part of DJS Racing, the Formula Student team at Dwarkadas J. Sanghvi College of Engineering in Mumbai — a group of students who design, manufacture and race formula-style prototypes every year.

Formula Student is exactly what it sounds like: build a small open-wheel race car from scratch, then take it to a competition where judges score everything from design and cost to how it actually performs on track. Less a class project, more a startup with a deadline and a chequered flag.

Over those years I was part of three cars. My work sat where engineering meets logistics — planning what we'd manufacture, chasing suppliers across the city, lining up sponsorships, and teaching myself carbon fibre to shave weight where it mattered. I learned vehicle dynamics the hard way: by building the thing and watching it run.

Three outings stand out:

• DJSR 02 — Formula Student India 2016, at the Buddh International Circuit (BIC) near Delhi.
• DJSR 03 — Formula Bharat 2017, at the Kari Motor Speedway in Coimbatore.
• DJSR 03 — Formula Student Germany 2017, at the Hockenheimring in Germany.

That last one — taking a car our team built in Mumbai to the Hockenheimring, where Formula 1 has raced — is still one of the proudest things I've been part of. Suppliers, sponsors, late nights in the workshop, a whole team pulling in one direction: it was my first real taste of building something big with people, and it set the tone for everything after.