Mumbai, March 28: For the last nine months, 40-odd IIT students in Powai confined themselves to a lab, living on snacks and sandwiches. For recreation they watched movies on their laptops. A few saw their grades drop, others were thankful they didn’t have girlfriends or else they would surely have been dumped.

But when they a have the chance to lay claim of having a hand in the making of a Formula One prototype car, girlfriends can take a back seat.

Anxiety was in the air today as the project neared completion, with Vayu being wheeled out. Soon, the four-wheeler will be air-lifted to Detroit, United States for a competition organised by the Formula Society of Automotive Engineers. There, Vayu will compete with other F1 prototypes constructed by amateur teams from 120 countries.

Rishabh Bhandari, the 21-year-old head of the project and a Formula One fanatic, was hooked from when he first heard of the competition from his seniors. “It has been a tough balancing act these past few days. Academics and other activities have had to be curtailed and at times totally avoided,” he said.

With the think-tank devoid of specialised expertise and because of limited know-how available on the web, it was a mostly trial and error project which had its daily share of problems. Bhandari, having completed a two-month internship with Maruti, had a basic idea of car-making, but the huge dynamics of putting together an F1 car at first seemed like rocket science to the team.

“We took the basic idea of car manufacturing as a template but we were stuck at times,” said Bhandari. When the conventional gear box didn’t fit into the narrow cockpit of the F1 type, the team had a crisis at hand. It was only when a professor suggested they use cables that things moved ahead.

They had their fair share of problems along the way.

“Once we had a major problem with welding. We knew about the expansion and contraction that comes during welding, but when we actually tried to put it in action, we realised how poloes apart theory and reality can be,” he said.

Speaking to Gunjan Shah, the marketing head of the team, one realises that the students have learnt a few marketing tricks. To finance the project Shah had to sell the idea to sponsors. “I had never sold anything in my life. But because of my oratory skills, I was given the task of convincing people to finance our project,” said the 20-year-old, who managed to convince four companies to come forward and offer help.

But with the hard work over now, it is the final exam in Detroit that is giving these scholars, and sports fans, butterflies in the stomach.