There's a 250-kilogram race car sitting in a workshop in Sleman, Yogyakarta, and every bolt on it was tightened by a 20-year-old. That's not a metaphor. Bimasakti Racing Team UGM  the student engineering team from Universitas Gadjah Mada  designs, builds, and races its own Formula Student cars from scratch, every single year, and has done so since 2010.

At a glance

• Founded: November 26, 2010  Indonesia's first Formula Student team
• 2025 car: BM-14H, Southeast Asia's first hybrid Formula Student car
• Countries raced in: Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Japan, India, Australia
• Next launch: 15th-generation car, August 17, 2026, at GIK UGM

Bimasakti Racing Team UGM is a student-run motorsport engineering organization based at the Faculty of Engineering, Universitas Gadjah Mada, in Yogyakarta. Since its founding in 2010, the team has built a new single-seater race car nearly every year to compete in Formula Student  an international engineering competition where university teams are judged on both how fast their car goes and how well they can defend the business case behind it. In August 2025, the team unveiled BM-14H, its 14th-generation car and the first hybrid Formula Student vehicle built in Southeast Asia.

Credit : Instagram Bimasaktiugm

What makes Bimasakti different from a normal student club?

Most student orgs plan events. Bimasakti's members spend their semesters in a workshop doing structural design, manufacturing, wiring, and welding, then get in the car themselves to test it. The team handles the entire build pipeline in-house  chassis design, powertrain assembly, and final testing  before the car ever sees a track.

That hands-on model is also what makes BM-14H notable. The car runs a hybrid all-wheel-drive system: a combustion engine drives the rear wheels while electric motors power the front two, a setup that also enables regenerative braking. It's a genuine engineering leap from the team's earlier, combustion-only cars, and it puts Indonesian students in the same technical conversation as hybrid-powertrain teams from Europe and Japan.

How has Bimasakti performed internationally?
The team has raced across six countries  Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Japan, India, and Australia  a route few Indonesian university programs, in any field, can claim. At Formula SAE Italy 2025, held on the Varano de' Melegari circuit, Bimasakti placed in the Business Plan Presentation, Cost and Manufacturing, and Engineering Design Presentation categories, and finished third overall in its class.

"We're stepping into a new chapter  building a hybrid all-wheel-drive car as real proof of our commitment to keep innovating," said Rafi Adyatma, captain of Bimasakti's 14th generation.

Here's the detail most people miss: building one of these cars isn't cheap or quick. A previous-generation Bimasakti car cost roughly 650 million rupiah to develop, according to a 2023 statement from then-captain Yosh Alfaninata  funded largely through corporate sponsorship, not campus budgets. Students negotiate that funding themselves, on top of the engineering.

What's next for the team?
Bimasakti is preparing to unveil its 15th-generation car on August 17, 2026, at Gelanggang Inovasi dan Kreativitas (GIK) UGM. The team will once again be the only Indonesian squad competing at Formula SAE Italy 2026  a distinction it has now held across multiple seasons.

For a program with no professional staff, no factory, and no guaranteed budget, that's not a small claim. It's students betting years of unpaid nights on a car that has to prove itself against teams from countries with far deeper motorsport infrastructure  and, so far, winning enough to keep getting invited back.