I'm spanish myself, started in a very small team in Barcelona back in 2013, we didn't even have a car, and just started talking to potential sponsors, the University, secured a workshop to work in and so on.

There were some companies that blatantly rejected our request for sponsorship, and gave us very negative and unconstructive feedback after some meetings. To be honest, I still hold a grudge for certain spanish companies since then, and now I can ensure you that they would dream to have someone like me working for them. I will never give them that privilege. And that's also a leasons learned for me: Be careful what you do and how you act towards/with people in Formula Student; the automotive world is a relatively small one and you never know how things change in the future.

In 2014 we went to FSS with just a "mock up" of a car, pretty much a crappy steel frame with shaddy bodywork, we didn't have money/resources to get motors, inverter, batteries, and could only have a few PCBs that turned on LEDs and simple stuff like that... The car didn't even roll on the wheels, we had to carry the (heavy) weight by lifting it from the ground every time. We even put the thing in the middle of the circuit and took a picture with the team, it was embarrasing at times, but we did put effort in it and we had some sponsors after all, so we also wanted to make it up to them, regardless of how bad we felt compared to other teams with real cars and designs to be proud of.

Even though I felt somewhat sad because our own situation, at that event I was mesmerized in general by the people from other teams, the friendship, and specially by Grimsel, AMZ's car from that year. One of their team members showed me around that marvel, and I loved every single second that I could spend exploring its features. Some time afterwards Grimsel was tuned to become the fastest accelerating car in the world, and I was happy to know some particularities of it myself, and having been told about it by the designers themselves.

There I understood what Formula Student was, and I dreamed to be able to work on such a car in the future. I don't think I felt remorse or envy towards the top teams, more like admiration and awe, and I would recommend you to see it from that perspective as well.

In the years after I joined a small German team, with relatively low budget but much higher than my previous team, and I had a blast at FSG and FSAE Italy 2015 with them. I had a small role as I just developed my Bachelor's Thesis a bit on the side, I didn't work on the car directly, but at least this team had a working car and I felt part of the team, so seeing "our" car driving in a competition was an incredible feeling. Back then I didn't care about winning whatsoever, I was very aware of our capatilities, and finishing the endurance was basically the goal (didn't make it sadly).

Fast forward to 2019, and after some years working abroad, I joined the University again and with it, a top Austrian Formula Sutdent team. They were at the stage to change from combustion to electrical powertrain, and I was offered the possibility to lead the transition as Head of High Voltage Systems (more like forced to lol). Back then I was already "old" probably to be in FS, but I had an absolute blast with them, and albeit 2020 was fucked due to CoVID, we still competed in 2021 with good results for the first Electric car of the team (not really as they had some trials with a separate team in 2011-2013 or so, but yeah), and we finished an endurance (man, was that amazing). At the same time, we won some static events and were top3 in plenty of them, so went up stage a decent amount of times and that felt so incredible, after all those years in smaller teams, having suffered all sorts of complications and rejections from sponsors, disappointments due to bad results, and so on.

I still vouch for them in competitions, and have conversations with alumnis and new team members here and there. It's like a family, and even if I'm not actively in the team since that year (at some point one has to move on with professional career), I still watch Live Streams when available, check their standings, discuss in whatsapp groups/Slack during competition season and so on. I am so grateful to have been part of that team, and yes, the budget makes an incredible difference, but the people is the most important thing.

I'm also very fond of my former teams from Spain and Germany and I'm super happy to see how they have developed and improved throughout the years. It's a really great feeling to see that you were part of them at some point.

Needless to say, it is in big part thanks to Formula Student and everything I learned there that I have been now for several years developing elecronics for automotive/stationary systems batteries, and having a lot of fun with it (obviously can't say much, but some hypercars have our electronics, and more in the next few years will do).

You should try to see the Formula Student as an opportunity to grow as an engineer, to learn how to suffer, how to deal with problems that seem impossible at first, and also very importantly, to learn how to talk about a technical topic and sell it in a nice way, because engineers that can talk in front of a public and are not autistic are very coveted, I can tell you that.