[QUOTE]Originally posted by Owain:
Well said Kenny! As a team leader, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all the boys on behalf of me and Jon for such an excellent job for Oxford Brookes University, something to be proud of. This is the best team that we've both worked with and the best that Brookes has had and its been an extremely emotional year and weekend. The car only had bodywork on it 2 weeks ago so if that’s all you can do in terms of results i.e. the 2 British teams that were in the top 10 well you've got a lot to answer for. We finished 15th without finishing the enduro with a failure that was not down to any designed parts of our own and that says something.QUOTE]

Great post Owain.

Marko: Brookes have done a lot of comps and done well relative to other British teams, you’ve done nothing nor has your University so try and be a little fairer. An appreciation of just how little sleep most of the teams will have got last week and how difficult building one of these cars actually is might be needed on your part. Also if Howard Ash et al don’t collectively win a faculty advisor award in the next couple of years I’ll be surprised.

Having said that, Brookes’ driver does race a lot and is leading a UK club championship if I heard correctly. As a result he talks like a racing driver rather than an FSAE student and this can come across poorly to some.

Ben

Ok, Will Chan in that waterloo car was pretty fast I keep hearing....

How was the circuit? Similar to last year's? (and every year before that?)

I heard a driver say the autocross track was somewhat faster than in the previous years. Probably in an effort to make the various competitions more similar.
Off course the main shape stays pretty much the same as it has to follow the kart track.

Ben: the Delft cars usually suffer much more from a lack of testing than from a lack of weight. The failures at competition have never been weight related, except for 2000 when the car was too heavy for its suspension :-)

Igor

Totally agree on the lack of testing. Also the driver looked very tentative so driver training might be an issue.

My point was, do you think the design and manufacturing phase ends up being too long to allow this testing because of the level of analysis required to hone a car to such a low mass? If not, fine but I think the question’s worth asking.

Ben

Is it just me or has anyone else added up the event scores to gain a total points score??

I seem to think the ImechE have their sums wrong... Anyone else agree??

Also can anyone confirm if there is a rule enforcing a testing ban at the circuit of the competition a week before the event??

Does anybody have the complete results? Or at leats the overall standings?

Hi All,

Just to clarify what happened to us...

Marko suggested the Loughborough car stopped when Munich had a mechanical failure in front of us and subsequently we proceeded to drive back to the pits to demand a restart. This is absolutely not the case.

We only lost a few seconds due to the yellow flags, but otherwise Munich's problems didn't affect our race at all. In a completely unrelated incident a couple of corners after passing them, the engine just died (we're not sure why yet). Tom was able to get it restarted without outside assistance but the Clark of the Course deemed that it had taken too long to do this (it took about 2 minutes after stopping I think). We were instructed to drive back to the pits (via the grass and then across the infield) where it was confirmed we would not be allowed to continue.

We couldn't find a rule that says how long you have to restart the car (assuming it's done without outside assistance) so we tried appealing, but to no avail. It seems there's an unwritten rule that says you have to restart within a lap (i.e. approx 55 secs on the FS circuit). I guess it would be worthwhile including this in the rules, just so everybody is clear - the marshals on the circuit certainly had no idea what was going on!

So basically the car was/is fine except in that period of 2 minutes where it wouldn't fire up. We had just started lapping in the 53s so it was looking good…

Overall though it was a great event with some exceptional cars and teams. The Graz car/team combination was the most outstanding for me although in terms of achieving the perfect FSAE car, ETS must be the closest yet...

Also, it's been suggested that many of the UK teams were allowed to rerun the endurance event. I know that an extra session was added for reruns, but it's my understanding that these were demonstration runs only - no points awarded. I seem to recall their being a fair representation of nationalities in the group.

On the subject of nationalities…There was clearly a great deal of dissatisfaction in the awards ceremony with the concept of UK-only prizes. I would personally agree that it's not suitable to have any distinction between nationalities when it comes to the awards. I appreciate that from a sponsorship point of view, it adds a category that would appeal to a UK company, such as the RAC, however I think the sporting concept is wrong and this ultimately should be the deciding factor. A UK-only award can only serve to alienate the overseas teams, who, travel at great expense to an old airfield in the middle of Leicestershire every year and without whom the event would be considerably less exciting and interesting. It also puts the UK teams in the unfair position of having to collect an award which has been jeered at during the announcement (although the UK teams themselves were given a generous round of applause when actually collecting the award). I hope the IMechE will reconsider this before overseas teams decide to go elsewhere…

Dean
LU Motorsport

I don't think there's a rule that gives a max amount of time to re-start the engine.

In fact, I recall Wollongong in the 2004 Detroit comp taking a few minutes by the side of the track to get going again, but once it fired again they were off.

In my opinion, if you're willing to hang out for a few minutes and take the time penalty that goes along with it, you should be allowed to go.

But what about that rule that says you need to lap within 133% of the quickest time? I thought this only applied if you're consistently slow.

Matt Gignac
McGill Racing Team

During the driver's meeting for endurance at Detroit 2005, it was stated that time allowed to restart the car would be based on average lap time, i.e. if you were lapped while stopped it was over.
Was anything like this mentioned at the FStudent meetings?

quote:

Originally posted by Wilso:
During the driver's meeting for endurance at Detroit 2005, it was stated that time allowed to restart the car would be based on average lap time, i.e. if you were lapped while stopped it was over.
Was anything like this mentioned at the FStudent meetings?

I don't recall anything being mentioned in the briefing. I dare say it will be added to the rules for next year...

Ultimately though we can't really complain - the car stopped and that's our problem. We're guessing it was a setting on the ECU whereby the fuelling was cut at a certain air temp reading - we'd never run in such hot conditions so were unaware of this setting...We'll have to arrange some test sessions in the south of France next year!

Oh well - just 361 days until FS 2006!

Dean
LU Motorsport

What kind of supercharger was that team using with the cbr?

Ben:
A valid question indeed and not one with a clear answer. The Delft team has chosen a design philisophy since the 2003 car which is based on minimum weight. This results directly in an enormous amount of components you have to manufacture yourself instead of buying off the shelf. Especially the carbon rims have caused quite a delay in the program due to sealing issues this year. The team is rather big though, over 50 I think, so in theory there should be enough manpower to manufacture the car. Unfortunately it seems a team gets exponentially harder to manage as it grows that big, and thus the chance of keeping deadlines grows dimmer and dimmer.
So is it worth it? The cars at competition keep breaking down, so it looks like a general bad idea. On the other hand there is a lot of promise. In 2004 the car was ready on time as the team aimed for the Aachen shootout a month before the competition. Subsequently that car was properly tested and was living up to its promise at the competition. With only the endurance left to run the team was actually in first place. A faulty contact eventually ended the endurance prematurely, but in fairness I don't think they would have been faster than RMIT. A top three finish would have been possible though and it has proven the "light car concept" to at least ourselves.

In the end it comes down to how you think you can gain an edge over the other teams and win this competition. Building a "standard" car makes it very hard to win the competition as there are a lot of teams that have their act pretty well together.

So I think Delft will try again next year with the same concept and hopefully a stricter planning. At least I will encourage them to keep trying the hard road.

Hmm, this post has gotten a little long winded, sorry about that

Igor
Delft alum

does anybody here have ETS pictures? did they bring the same car from FSAE 04? Love to see how their telemetry works.

ETS's 04 car was at 04 F-Student, and it won Design as well if I recalled correctly, as well as various other awards from National Instrument, Honda, and I believe the Composite award from McLaren.....

quote:

2. If asked the value of a vehicle parameter in a design event "didn't you read our spec sheet?" is the wrong answer.

LOL

quote:

Originally posted by ben:
Marko: Brookes have done a lot of comps and done well relative to other British teams, you’ve done nothing nor has your University so try and be a little fairer.

I've indeed done nothing, but you don't have to have done everything under the sun to make an observation. If the barrier was there to prevent the pits being a thoroughfare I can accept that.

Thing is the barrier was there even when the guys weren't working on the car. It was there even when they were in briefings/weren't in the pits. Even if not intentional the message it sent was "you're not welcome in here".

Didn't stop me having a goodly look around the car (a well made affair by all accounts) whilst the team were in briefings etc but did put me off speaking to you guys when you were there.

Look at it from an outsider's point of view and perhaps you can see why you gave the impression you did?

If this is not a "fair" observation then we'll have to agree to disagree on what's fair or not.

quote:

Also if Howard Ash et al don’t collectively win a faculty advisor award in the next couple of years I’ll be surprised.

Chatted to two of the faculty in the class 2/3 tents - not sure which two (guy in the chair and another) but they both seemed top blokes.

quote:

Having said that, Brookes’ driver does race a lot and is leading a UK club championship if I heard correctly. As a result he talks like a racing driver rather than an FSAE student and this can come across poorly to some.

<edited>
Comments removed after speaking to Craig - but those in the first post still stand.
</edited>

Deano - understood. From pit side grandstand it looked like you guys just stopped then drove a perfectly functional car (the fact it was running perfectly when it entered the pits didn't help!) back to the pits once the germans were off the track; I couldn't stay to the very end and chat/comiserate with you guys hence the 'it appears' - didn't mean to mislead or cause offence and have changed post to suit! Agree about the "UK" awards. Its not only discouraging overseas entries, but its also insulting to the UK teams that the organisers deem it neccessary to award 'special prizes' to a country 'who wouldn't get any otherwise' as it were. Lose them, or temporarily suspend them until such a time as you can offer an award for the best team from each and every country?

Rob - supercharger was a geared turbo compressor side jobbie.

Mad Ruska - agreed, that car had potential and sounded gorgeous with the "twin 2:1" exhausts (1&2, 3&4)

Tyres - was very noticeable how little wear there was on the LeConts on Delft's car and the Avons/Goodyears on others for that matter. Hoosiers on the cars that finished endurance were looking "most definitely broken in" by comparason.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: markocosic,

I was a totaly new car that was brought to Formula Student. The formula 04 rest in our university hall. And yes we won the most desirable engineering product from honda, also best use of composite and pi research award and the design.

from left to right f2005 and f2004

Marko, you seem that you have missed one of the main points of formula student, to have fun. If you thought craig was rubbing salt into belfasts wounds then you were wrong. If you wondered around the pits you would have seen alot of jesting occuring and much banter between the teams, and it was all harmless fun. As for the 'sure of themselves' attitude, show me a racing driver who isn't confident in their abilities.
I would also like to say congratulations to hertfordshire university on their top uk ranking (only 2 places above brookes i may add!!) and also thank them for causing much ammusement throughout the paddock with thier MI5 agent impressions over the weekend.

http://us.share.geocities.com/brunoc1234/f2005e2004.jpg
Here is a pic from our unveiling ceremony.

Thanks for the MI5 comments throughout the weekend, we did have fun there. We were really happy with our performance thought the weekend, the months hard testing and at least 14 hour days for a month really helped improve the car. We achieved better times on the day than in testing for acceleration (4.12 4th) and Skidpad (5.083 5th) but had a poor sprint. The drivers were happy with the car and the setup was unchanged for the endurance and proved right on the test track later that day, one of those motersport things. We were also 5th in the endurance which was really impressive and only 62 seconds behind the winners after deductions. Most of you would have missed our endurance because we were second on track in the morning because of our sprint time, this cause a lot of traffic and overtaking losing us important time, the marshalling wasn’t great then either. Their was also a lot less rubber on track and the temperature was a lot cooler at 21 rather than the 32 when Toronto went out but we still managed to have the second fastest lap in the morning, during testing we had loads of heat in the tires and huge chunks of used rubber was being flung off the car which was not happening in the enduro. Overall it may have been a god send running with cooler temps for the car cos we may have not finished later in the day.

I have to agree with the comments about our rivals Brooks, they seemed very unprofessional all weekend and I heard of bad comments from people in the trade who were unimpressed when they talked to them. So I must return some comments now it is all over to their team regarding some of their comments, First that 5 Brake extra engine map you did on Friday really didn’t help you in the acceleration because we beat you and you came no where near your claimed testing 3.8 second run. From the comments of us copying your car this year, I saw your faculty adviser in our workshop at least twice in the year because of his commitments with the marking board, from talking at length with him on many occasions thought the weekend I think he would have nothing to do with something like that but this is motersport you can't trust anyone. Also we did clean our car a lot because we are so proud of it and for you reporting you spend the time preparing and working on your car instead, well we had no problem with bolts or parts coming loose because of lack of preparation and all of this from a solid team of 9.

With that said I would like to send my commiseration to the Birmingham team, they were the nicest people I met all weekend, they pulled us around to the back of their car, talked at length on the intricate parts of their car and were unluckily to break a new chain in the enduro. Their car was solid on track and preformed very well, for me I don't know how we beat you into the design finals.

I'd also like to send congratulations to Sussex team for getting a car to the competition, it was their first year of the event and with a limited budget and 5 people they did a great job. As they admitted it was a slightly over engineered but with a finish that made some established teams look like amateurs. They were unlucky to retire from the enduro with a bought in fuel component failing. Well done lads.

About the Best British prize that we won, I also agree it is a bit strange for an international competition but it has been in place since the beginning of the competition and it has taken 8 years before any complains. I also think the SAE / Imeche are trying to dumb down the competition by splitting the event into smaller events around the world, with a event in Italy and Germany coming up and now two events in America the standard of the competition will lower with teams only racing teams from the same country and a few traveling teams. It may work thought because I would put money on a world finals event being held in coming years. The reason must be to lower the team count in each event creating easier to organize events. In my opinion we have a very competitive event in England now and teams from Europe would do well in America and Australia because the standards of cars over here are improving faster than the Americans at least.

So my thanks to all the teams for making a great competition and special thanks to the Delft team for organising the design final photo shoot even thought our lecture took charge and moved everyone around, something our team will never forget being classed with so many great cars and teams.

James Waters
Chassis Designer, Suspension, Packaging and Race Engineer
University of Hertforshire Car 20

Congrats to University of Toronto for another excellent showing at Formula Student from all of the guys at Performance Electronics.