FORMULA One races may be hitting our streets just this September but one Singaporean has been designing, manufacturing and racing formula cars for the past two years.

Army regular Mr Daniel Perh, 26, even drove Singapore to victory during his first-ever competition at the International Formula Society of Automotive Engineers race in Michigan, USA in May 2006.

The 3m-long cars are a scaled down version of their Formula One counterparts. At the five-day competition, drivers have to race their cars through tricky obstacle courses and a 22km "endurance" race. Directors from car companies such as General Motors and Ford Motor assess the student-built models on their cost, construction and suitability for production.

Then a third-year mechanical engineering student at the National University of Singapore (NUS), Mr Perh and a team of eight fellow students took Asia's top spot for the car design and overall ranking. The team came in ninth and 27th in the world for the car design and overall ranking, respectively.

NUS competed against well-known universities with strong engineering departments such as Cornell University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "These schools send teams of 20 to 40 people, each with individual specialities and tasks. Our team of nine had to do everything from designing to welding parts, to marketing the car to the judges," Mr Perh explained.

NUS associate professor Seah Kar-Heng, 54, who supervises the yearly projects, said that starting up the engines is always the toughest part of the project, which nearly did not take off - figuratively.

He recalled being approached in 2001 by five of his car-enthusiast students who had read about the competition and wanted to take part. He said: "But who should we consult? Where do we get the parts? There was no expertise to tap on as we have no car-building industry in Singapore at all."

NUS' first race car was completed in 2003, after a year of scouring through workshops for spare parts and finding sponsorship. Each car, which can go up to 200kmh, costs about $100, 000 to build. The pioneering team raced in 2004. Mr Perh said: "These cars are not just some remote control toy cars you can crash and rebuild after."

This article was first published in my paper on Apr 10, 2008.