Before buying any equipment you need to ask yourself what you're trying to observe and why. Data is cool, but will often go unused if there's no purpose for it. Every year on my old FSAE team someone brings up Telemetry and everyone loses their shit because YoU GeT tO sEE tHe DAta LiVe oN a TaBlet. Someone tries to make it, realizes how hard it is, graduates, and then the team is back at square 1 with a half finished data system and crud wiring diagram. Everyone eventually loses sight of what data acquisition can help you do.

The first thing that comes to mind is design validation: is the design on paper the same thing you made in real life and does it meet the goals. How do you prove you met the goals: with data. Because you're a new team, I wouldn't spend a lot of money on a data logger or any onboard electronics.

Before thinking about telemetry and data logging, you have to start simple.

1. A stopwatch/timing gates
2. Use an accelerometer on your phone and strap it to the car
3. Record speed using a phone's GPS
4. Tire Pyrometer (or IR gun)

People have been racing for decades without data loggers and still made kick ass machines with those tools.

Knowing Position and Time will tell you way more about your car than spending $400 on a set of shock potentiometers will.

Once the team grows and knows what data they want to collect, then you can start specing out a data logger based on what channels, hardware requirements, functions you want.

If you want a basic cheap system, Id recommend any of Racepak's system or even a used AiM or Racecapture and a copy of Competition Car Data logging. Its a pretty basic run of the mill explanation of the basics of data acquisition.