SEOUL, July 02 (AJP) - Kookmin University's student-run motorsports club finished eighth overall out of roughly 100 teams at the 2026 Formula SAE Electric world championship, delivering the strongest result in the club's short history with an electric race car built entirely by undergraduates.
The competition ran from June 16 to 20 at Michigan International Speedway in Brooklyn, Michigan, the birthplace of Formula SAE and still its largest venue. SAE International, the professional body that oversees engineering standards across the automotive and aerospace industries, organizes the annual event and this year drew roughly 100 university teams from around the world, according to the organization's own registration records. Teams design, build, and race their own electric formula cars, and are scored across categories that test both engineering rigor and on-track performance.
Kookmin University's team, called Kookmin Racing (KORA), entered the competition for only the second time. Its car, the F-26, was built around a goal the team described as stability paired with strong performance across every event on the schedule. That balance showed up most clearly in the Endurance Event, which tests how well a car holds up over a long, demanding run. KORA finished third in that category, aided by fast lap times and a car that held its performance steady from start to finish.
The team also placed ninth in the Skidpad Event, which measures a car's cornering grip, and 11th in the Autocross Event, a timed run through a tight course designed to test handling and driver control. In the Design Event, where judges evaluate how well a car was engineered, built, and refined, KORA advanced to the final round and finished 12th.
Kookmin University, led by President Jeong Seung-ryul, has been building up its automotive and mobility programs as part of a longer-term academic strategy called KMU VISION 2035: EDGE, which names mobility as one of eight fields the university wants to become known for. The KORA program fits squarely into that push. Students on the team handle every stage of building a race car themselves, from initial design through manufacturing, testing, and on-track troubleshooting, giving them hands-on engineering experience before they graduate.
Cho Hyun-sung, a fourth-year automotive engineering student who served as project manager for the F-26 team, said the competition gave the team a chance to prove itself on an international stage. "This competition lets us show the world the quality of Kookmin University's automotive engineering program," Cho said, adding: "It was a valuable experience that broadened our perspective and taught us so much. I am grateful to Kookmin University, our sponsor companies, and every teammate who shared this journey with us."
Shin Sung-hwan, dean of Kookmin University's College of Automotive Engineering and Mobility and the club's faculty adviser, framed the result as a marker of how far the young program has come. "I am proud of the KORA students, who competed against leading universities from around the world in the electric formula category and earned an eighth-place finish overall only two years after joining the competition," Shin said. The professor added that he was grateful to the university administration for its support and to the students for their dedication, and vowed to continue working to develop talent for the future of the automotive industry.
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