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.

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