KINGSTON, R.I. – March. 25, 2026 – This May the University of Rhode Island’s Rhody Racing team will accelerate into school history, fielding a car in the Formula SAE for the first time. The Formula SAE is an engineering competition where students design and build formula 1-style cars. 

The team will compete against 119 teams at the Michigan International Speedway. The team’s road from the Kingston Campus to Brooklyn, Michigan, has been marked by twists and turns over the years.

“We’ve never gotten past a lottery system, and we’ve never passed that SAE form,” said Rhody Racing President and engineering junior Paul Moura.

To get the car race ready required a lot of work on the backend. It’s not simply building a high speed vehicle. Some of the technical work the team undertook included welding the chassis together, running tests on the engine, and performing maintenance on the powertrain. Additionally, the team needed to fundraise in an effort to ensure that if something goes wrong, they have money to fix it. 

“We’ve had to be more resourceful than some of the teams we’ll be competing against,” said Moura. “That’s what we’re doing here today.” 

On Tuesday, the team gathered in Ballentine Hall to thank those who helped carry the project and team across the finish line. Moura says the support of the University community has been instrumental. 

Among those working with Moura has been the URI College of Business’ Textiles, Fashion Merchandising and Design Department, offering its expertise in an often-overlooked aspect of racing: driver safety—particularly flame-resistant suits.

That is where Soondus Hammad ‘26 entered the picture—answering a flyer for TMD students.

“The Rhody Racing team needed some textile technicians,” said Hammad. “The way the flyer was worded was interesting and I thought, ‘I don’t really know what this is, but I’m going to inquire anyway,’”

The TMD graduate saw it as a challenge worth taking. She felt she had the autonomy to take a suit design in a slew of different directions. With no background in racing, she began developing concepts from the ground up. 

The governing body that oversees driver safety maintains pages of detailed requirements for suits—stipulating approved materials, socks and even footwear—so, she sought clarity on the regulations. 

“For example, one of the outfit rules says that the suit and the shoes should meet but you’re sitting down and moving so you need to ensure a protective cover between the two,” said Moura. 

The suit would also have had to be sent to England, have extensive testing done and get approved—a very costly endeavor—to be used in competition.

Instead, Moura and Hammad chose another path—ordering a certified suit.

The Problem with Racing Suits

A major issue Hammad hopes to solve–and something Moura noticed–happened within 10 minutes of putting on the racing suit. Many of the certified suits are constructed of high-performance Kevlar with no exposed area—meaning they offer virtually no ventilation.

Moura calls it a common driver complaint.

Though racing suits have advanced significantly in the past two decades, this central tension remains. The suits are engineered to shield drivers if they crash and the car ignites. The suits are designed to absorb the intense heat. That protection, however, leaves little room for airflow.

“Performance textiles like this need to be heat resistant; think of a fireman’s suit, they enter really dangerous environments,” said Hammad. “If there’s a crash, a driver needs as much time as possible to escape without getting burned.”

Though Moura and his team have never raced with a suit on, he says the issue is widely recognized. It’s not uncommon for cockpit temperatures to climb well past 100 degrees—forcing drivers to deal with heat exhaustion in addition to hairpin turns.

“A good reference would be the Formula One Singapore Grand Prix, where the cockpit can reach temperatures of near 150 degrees Fahrenheit due to the extreme heat, combined with high humidity and very close proximity to the engine. These factors matched with the low pressure cockpit creates extreme conditions for the driver to endure,” said Moura.

While the rules stipulate that they can’t alter the approved suit before race day, they hope to debut a URI-designed prototype in time. The goal is to have that prototype used during non-competition days to obtain data such as temperatures inside the suit, and areas that can be used to help with air flow to keep the drivers cool

Hammad is exploring ways to increase breathability through biomimicry.

“I want to look at nature for inspiration and potentially incorporate that into the design. I think of shark gills as a design concept that involves side paneling of the suits so there’s some sort of airflow going in and out,” said Hammad.

Ultimately, both share the same ambition: To develop a suit that meets safety standards while improving ventilation—and that is unmistakably Keaney Blue.

“The big thing for us is the URI motto ‘Think Big. We Do.’ Because it’s what we’re doing, competing against other major universities. Even if we could add ‘Think Big. We Do.’ across our chests, I think that’d be a great way to represent the school,” said Moura.