Redback Racing: How non-engineers help drive the team's success

Engineering is important, but Redback Racing needs Business and Media minds too.

Published on the 16 April 2026

The Redback Racing team testing their 2025 car

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Where media becomes motorsport fuel

When you think of the UNSW Redback Racing, the immediate thought is usually on the engineering and technical aspects. Yes, the designing and building of the car are incredibly important for the team, but that's only a part of what makes Redback Racing operate like a well-oiled machine.

If we look underneath the hood a bit more, Redback Racing is not only home to some great engineers and science-focused students, but it is also home to some incredibly talented business and media people whose contributions matter just as much as building a car. There's a lot of importance in getting the look and vibe of the team right, as well as making sure that sponsors for the team are happy.

For Harita Lakshmi Venkatesakumar, a third-year Design and Media student who joined Redback as part of its Media and Design team within the Business department, the work required on the creative and media side was a whole new experience that proved to be a very practical application of her degree.

"One of the very first big things I was involved in was launch night. I assisted with putting together a press release for our sponsors and just prepping the evening," recalls Harita. "It was very cool just seeing people set up the livestream. We try to break everything down and plan ahead, and everyone was so nice."

Since that big launch night, Harita has been involved with designing the merchandise, the team's social media posts, and arguably the most important aspect, the car's livery. Redback's design team has varied between four and 11 members, but the key things to note are that they do a LOT of stuff and there's a surprising amount of creative freedom (within reason).

"When I walked in and they walked me through onboarding, the first real thing I noticed about Redback is [how there's] a real structure to the way that we work, and it helps the whole team."

"There are a few stipulations, like the color palette and typography, but I get to design different graphics for different posts for different purposes," explains Harita. "I recently put together our prospectus for sponsors. That was something I had complete creative control in. They were just like, 'hey, make sure it's red and black and everything else is fine!'"

The level of sponsor commitments may surprise some, especially Harita, but it makes sense once you realise that Redback Racing is essentially self-sufficient. That being said, finding a balance between what stakeholders want and one's own creativity is an important learning for those on the Media team.

"There's a lot of emphasis on creating content around the team, like very goofy videos. Redback a bit more on the sponsored side [but] it's still very good," says Harita. "We [also] try to put out a lot of media publications about the team, about what certain members can do and what the team can do as well."

Carving out the ideal media image

Harita came into a structured and organised team, but it wasn't always that way. Building Redback Racing's online presence and image began almost by accident, courtesy of Outreach Manager/Lab and Safety Co-Manager Daniel Tang, who first joined the team back in 2022.

"I expected joining the team to just take some photos, but my role slowly evolved into Social Media Manager, managing people and event planning," recalls Daniel. "I learned a lot of skills that I didn't expect coming into Redback."

"As the media team grew, it meant more planning and also taking on more areas and aspects of the team. Now we have to consider X, Y and Z. That's where the scope kind of broadens."

"The branding of the team, which many people don't think about, can weigh quite heavily because it's how you present the team. It's perception. It's brand image."

As a Law student, this was completely new territory for Daniel and he saw this as an opportunity to not only learn new skills but to help the team grow beyond its engineering roots. It goes without saying that marketing is crucial for any racing team if it wants to maximise its visibility, and thus appeal to sponsors, fans and prospective future team members. When he first joined, the Business team (which Media and Design is housed under), there were around seven people. These days it's closer to 30.

"That [growth] is because how we had marketed the team, right? It was also partly because we shifted the marketing to 'we're here to build a car, but actually, we're also here to run a motorsport team," explains Daniel.

"At the beginning, it was very much like this is an engineering project. But as we got bigger, we realised that we need resources," explains Redback Team Leader Chelsea Tran.

"In a way, the Business [department] is the only reason we can build these things. Without them, no one would know about us. No one would want to give us money."

Speed has a (literal) price tag

Running a racing team requires a lot of money (unsurprisingly), and one might be surprised to know that Redback Racing doesn't get any funding from UNSW itself. Rather, it's due to the hard work of the team's Business department that Redback can build its cars and go racing. Daniel recalls how the business side of things grew "exponentially" alongside the media side of things.

While the university provides the garage space for the team to operate out of, the funding is primarily from sponsors. Perhaps most surprisingly, it all came out of the ashes of a pandemic-influenced impact that hit the team heavily. Daniel says that after Redback Racing was dropped as a student project in 2020, it lost all of its funding. While the School of Mechanical Engineering picked up the team, it had to find a way to become self-sufficient.

"2022 was building [the team] up again, and that's where the funding [requirements] came in," recalls Daniel. "If we wanted to become better and keep growing, we needed money. One of the big double-edged swords of funding is that if you do well, the university will think, 'if you're able to achieve this result with X amount of money, there's no reason to give you more money.'"

The need to be unshackled without caveats with its funding proved to be the impetus for getting sponsors.

A big turning point for the team towards becoming self-sustaining was in 2023 when Haylee Hulbert was appointed as Team Lead. As she came from a Media/Art background, she brought an "incredible business acumen" to the team and helped transform Redback Racing's culture and how it operated on the financial side.

"We were increasingly realising that racing was so much more than just [being] like a student society, so that meant getting our name out there," recalls Daniel. "This meant getting sponsors like big German technical companies like Schaeffler and working with the government for grants."

"As our reputation grew and as we were affiliated with more big companies, others were seeing that as a safety net. It was like, 'hey, if they're already working with this company, then they're reliable!'"

Once the ball started rolling with sponsor outreach, new challenges arose with not only finding sponsors interested in supporting Redback Racing, but also how to offer them value on their investment.

"We'd essentially lost a lot of money [and] a lot of experienced members because of Covid, so we were very green team.

"Not only that, we were also transitioning from combustion engine cars to electric.

"There was a big infrastructure change. There was a lot of brain drain. You could say [2020] was a year of turmoil!"

"At some point we had 30-40 sponsors [who gave] discounts to sums of money. How you support over 30 sponsors, giving them fair attention in a year's span without flooding people's feeds?" This was one of the (positive) dilemmas Daniel faced as Redback Racing continued to grow, and it proved to be a fantastic opportunity for Design, Media and Business students on the team to flex their problem-solving muscles.

"We're not a big NFL [team]. No one knows what Formula SAE-A is outside of engineering. So if you're a company selling tools and you're able to sponsor our team, what you actually get out of it is a real question," explains Daniel. "It's definitely not marketing because we have 4,000 followers, 80 per cent of whom are probably UNSW students. What we do bring is perception in the sense that you're working with an electric car team."

"There's an environmental side of things. But secondly, and the biggest thing, is that companies can say they're supporting young engineers who will come work for our company [in the future]. They can say '[Redback members] will go on to do amazing things and we're a part of that journey.' It's an investment for the future."

Not an engineer? Not a problem!

Engineering may be one major aspect of Redback Racing, but it's far from the sole thing pushing the team towards success. For those who aren't from a science or engineering background, there's definitely a space on the team to not only build on their skills but to be part of an incredible student-led project.

"Motorsports and sports in general is sponsor-heavy, even if it doesn't look like it," says Harita. "You have sponsors everywhere, [so] learning how to talk to sponsors and creating media that resonates with them is a specific skill that needs to be learned. But, there's also a lot creative problem solving involved."

"We don't just need engineers. We need business students, media students and law students like myself," says Daniel. "It's the way you market the team and be more open to the community. There are times when software students didn't know there was a place for them in the team."

The only thing that's required? Initiative and a willingnesss to commit because Redback Racing will teach you skills far beyond your degree's scope.

"You can be a blank slate having not done much and still have success or a chance of getting involved [with Redback Racing]. You don't have to be an engineer. You don't have to have ever touched a tool."

All interview quotes have been edited for length and clarity.

Last edited on 14 April 2026