Malaga’s student single seat racers go on show at the Rectorado
Mart Racing Team marks ten years in Formula Student with an exhibition featuring its last combustion car and latest electric single-seater
Racing cars, student engineers and a decade‑long dream have taken over the University of Malaga’s Rectorado, where Mart Racing Team is celebrating ten years of Formula Student with a high‑octane exhibition open until April.
It’s a chance to get close to the single‑seater racing cars designed and built by students at the university (UMA).
Formula Student is a competition created for educational establishments, using motorsport as a training ground for would‑be engineers. Over the years the sophistication and quality of the cars has shot up and the series now visits major European circuits such as Germany’s Hockenheimring.
What began as a petrol‑powered contest has shifted with the times: combustion engines are giving way to electric cars and autonomous prototypes.
Malaga takes part with its own team: Mart Racing Team (MART). The exhibition in the Rectorato, on Avenida de Cervantes in the city centre, walks visitors through the last decade of the project, from the 2016/2017 season to today.
At the heart of the show are two prototypes, the MA23RT and the MA25RT. The first is MART’s last combustion car; the second is its latest electric model. Together, they tell the story of how both the team and the competition itself have evolved.
“This is not just an exhibition, it is the living testimony of a decade of learning, innovation and university‑level passion,” said project lead José María De la Varga. “In this room are ten years of MART’s history, a project born within the University of Malaga that, season after season, has turned engineering, communication and teamwork into a true school of life.”
That the person heading the project is a PhD in Business Administration and a lecturer in the Faculty of Economics is no mistake. It shows the scale of MART and how it reaches far beyond the most technical degrees. As in real‑world motorsport, a team is much more than pure engineering. Someone has to bring in money and look after the brand. Students from Economics and Communication take on that side of the work.
Keeping a project like Mart Racing Team alive, De la Varga admits, demands perseverance. Money is tight, and these are not easy times for the UMA. Every euro scraped together from private sponsors takes a titanic effort. The exhibition itself needs to be seen in that context too.
The exhibition is not only about ticking off a technical or chronological progression. It is set up as an emotional and educational journey: from the first sketches of a dream to the maturity of a community able to bring together talent, effort and knowledge around a shared goal.
Each car, each image, each object on display is a fragment of a shared story where technology, teaching and lived experience all intersect.
As they move through the different spaces, visitors can relive international competitions, educational projects, outreach activities and turning points that have defined MART’s identity.
Beyond the technical achievements, what really comes through is the transforming power of learning as a group. It emphasises the idea that a university can be a place where you learn by doing, by sharing and by daring to dream a bit bigger.
“For Malaga, MART represents the spirit of a city that backs technology, young talent and an international outlook: a project that reflects its identity, its energy and its vocation for the future,” said De la Varga.
