Students help steer Toronto Metropolitan Formula Racing team to Michigan competition win

Congratulations to Kimberlee Kolihal, Isabelle Bonello and the Toronto Metropolitan Formula Racing team, for coming first in the business presentation at the Formula SAE Michigan Electric Vehicle (EV) Series (external link)  competition.

“This year, we competed against 69 other international teams where we came first in business presentation, third in cost report, second in Ontario, seventh in Canada and 26th overall,” explained Business Lead Isabelle Bonello, a fourth-year HRM student. 

SAE International’s competition, held June 14-17, 2023 in Brooklyn, Michigan, challenged university teams to conceive, design, fabricate, develop, and compete with small, formula-style vehicles. The competition, hosted at the Michigan International Speedway (external link) , requires teams to demonstrate the performance of their vehicles, both on and off the track, in addition to a cost report and a business presentation.

The Toronto Metropolitan Formula Racing team (external link)  is an engineering design team, which designs, builds and manufactures F1-style vehicles each year and competes in international competitions. 

But, it’s not just for engineering students. The team has about 60 student members from various TMU faculties and departments. On the engineering side, there are computer science, and engineering and architectural science students. On the business side, there are Ted Rogers students, and students from media studies, creative industries, film, and sustainability. 

Bonello and Kimberlee Kohilal, a fourth-year GMS student and events lead for the team, found  that their background in business helped them with this international competition. 

“In terms of marketing, HR, finance, operations, I definitely think that because of TRSM and the coursework that I've done, that part for me was a breeze. It was great. I knew exactly what to look into and I knew exactly what the market looked like,” Bonello said. 

Kohilal’s part of the business presentation was all of the financials, including sales projections, revenue streams, cost breakdowns and financials for 10 years. But, Kohilal’s background in business helped her understand the numbers, solve principles, and understand what related to the cost of the car, as she prepared all of the financial statements required for the business presentation.

“Doing the financials gave me real world experience that sometimes you don't always get, especially in a case competition,” she said. “Because the SAE competition required such detailed work - they question you a lot when you present  - having those details was incredibly helpful. And without my classes at Ted Rogers School, I think I would have been really confused.”

Bonello, Kohilal and their team came back to Toronto triumphant after winning the business presentation for the second year in a row. After working on the presentation for two and a half months, hearing their name called was an exultant moment. 

“I remember we both found out at the same time and we were just kind of like, wait, what?” Bonello explained. “I froze. And then we heard our name called again… we just jumped up and down because of how much effort this had taken. It was such a good feeling for all our hard work to pay off.”

“We set a precedent of winning last year, and we wanted to keep that up,” Kohilal said. “Winning this year, knowing that we contributed, it was great just to know that our efforts weren’t in vain and that our hard work had a good result.”