One car, one season, a new generation of engineers

In Supporting the next generation of engineering, we introduced why INFICON supports the Academic Motorsports Club Zurich (AMZ): a team that runs like a company, builds its own software stack, and trains the engineers who will go on to work in high-tech companies like ours. In July, AMZ Racing was in action.

Formula Student judges teams across both theoretical and practical disciplines, from Business Plan Presentation and Cost on the theoretical side to various driving disciplines.

By Tuesday, AMZ ranked among the best teams in Acceleration, SkidPad, and Autocross, posting the fastest time in every single discipline. But in Formula Student, one discipline can still turn everything on its head, and that's exactly what awaited AMZ next. One discipline remained: Endurance, the event's last and toughest test, 22 kilometres with a mandatory driver change. "We've won all of the practical disciplines," Hefele said. "Now the most important thing is finishing Endurance, and with a good time. The tension is high, everyone's nervous. I am too."

That's where the trouble began. Nera crossed the finish line, but post-race technical scrutineering found a brake fluid leak at the connection to the left master cylinder and the car was disqualified from Endurance. AMZ protested, arguing the residue came from reservoir sweating in an unpressurized line rather than an actual leak, and that the brake system had proven functional in post-inspection. The officials rejected the appeal, ruling that the fluid found at the connection pointed to a genuine leak that, even in an unpressurized section, could lead to a critical brake failure, and applied 25 penalty points. The disqualification cost AMZ the podium it had been on track for, dropping the team to fourth overall in the class. Nera also ran a separate autonomous stint that day, winning the Driverless Cup outright. A trophy would have been nice, but tracing the failure, fixing it, and documenting it for the future AMZ teams is the result that actually matters to AMZ. 

One detail easy to overlook: Formula Student drivers are students too, chosen through an open, Switzerland-wide selection process. “The driver has to be a student. We advertise nationwide and they apply to us,” Hefele explained. This year's drivers brought different backgrounds to the seat: one raced go-karts in Italy as a teenager and still does, the other built up experience largely on a simulator. 

That same rotation applies far beyond the driver's seat. Cars turn over almost entirely within a year: around 16 ETH Zurich students join fulltime through the university's Focus Project programme, alongside Lucerne University of Applied Sciences students on part-year projects. Most step back once their year ends. “The learning curve at the start is extremely steep,” Laage said. “Before I joined, a tyre was just something black and round to me. Two weeks later, I knew about temperature, pressure, how it behaves under braking.” To pass that knowledge on, AMZ documents everything: checklists in shared spreadsheets and a self-hosted wiki, dating back to 2010, where every engineer logs how their part of the car was designed.

“When I joined, I thought everyone would end up in Formula 1,” Laage said. “The reality is different. People here are fascinated by engineering itself, and motorsport is just the context.” Alumni do go into motorsport, but also robotics, aerospace, and the wider high-tech industry, often the same fields INFICON serves. The subsystems AMZ engineers build each year, sensors, aerodynamics, lightweight structures, embedded software, transfer directly to high-tech manufacturing. 

Geschinen was one stop in a longer season. AMZ has several more Formula Student events ahead in 2026, with the season's highlight still to come: Formula Student Germany at the Hockenheimring, August 11 to 16, widely regarded as the most prestigious event on the calendar. After the Czech Republic, Hockenheim is where AMZ gets to show once again how its car measures up against strong international competition, and we're looking forward to following the team through the rest of the season.