Kick-off Alumni Association HARD

10 years of designing, engineering and producing race cars, means 10 years of experienced alumni that were once part of the Hanze Racing Division. This is the reason why in 2020 the Alumni Association of HARD was founded. With a slow start because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the alumni association was on hold, until now!

 

With a kick-off event on the 17th of March 2023, the alumni association of HARD is now fully back in business. Together with old team members, the current team and sponsors memories were brought up. 

The evening started with an interactive game to relive old memories such as seeing the sun rise at the workshop after a full night of work! The guilty people raised their green paper, allowing the crowd to see who shared these memories and the ones that did not, their red paper. 

Moving on to the first design presentation of the evening, Egbert Joostens, chairman of the Alumni Association of HARD, presented the intent of the now active association and its plans for the future. The aim of the association is to establish and maintain contacts between everyone who has been involved with HARD. This all for personal recreation and to help out the current team with their own development and the producing the next generations of race cars!

 

For the members of the alumni association, it is exciting and essential to know what the current team is up to, which is why the leads of the engineering departments gave a Design Presentation of the current car, the HRD05-2. 

Bas van Kranenburg started off with the mechanical engineering side of the car, something that was easier to understand for most of the crowd than the electrical engineering side that was presented by Tobias Harryvan. Since the HRD05-2 is the first electrical race car built by HARD, the designs of the first electrical systems that are going to be produced by HARD were shown and explained. Michal Tesnar, lead of the driverless engineering department, took the attendees to another new aspect of the team and explained the thoughts and initial designs of an autonomous race car, which is laying in the near future of HARD! With the HRD05-2 being electric, there is an opportunity to compete in the Formula Student competition with additional driverless software in order to drive autonomously on track! Damien Dufour, chairman of HARD, stepped away from the engineering side and gave an update on the current team status and the organisation of the communication and acquisition departments of the team. Herewith, the design presentation of the team 2022-2023 and the HRD05-2 came to an end. Laughter, drinks and memories we shared as people mingled and reminisced of their times at HARD.