What was it, only a couple years ago it took 100 some days to fill the registration for the Silverdome. This year it was 19 minutes. Next year will be even more insane.

Gotta wonder if there's some plan to alleviate this. Even with FSAE West, East is where everyone wants to go.

From what I understand they will be adding another 10 entries to the West comp and taking another 10 away from the East comp. So in 2008 it will be 90 schools at West and 120 at East. One of the coordinators I spoke to said that this will be the trend for the next couple of years.

Just out of curiosity, why is that going to be the trend. I would think that with new teams starting up, they should be expanding the entry list for Detroit and finding a larger event site if it were needed.

Its just because there are so many teams. I asked him why they were going to do that and his answer was because Detroit is over capacity. I remember one of the judges saying that judging the competition alone is a very exhausting process. With so many teams out there I believe that you would have to have an additional competition. Expansion has already happened....about 200 teams are competing in North America...just not all at the same time/location.

time to add FSAE MidWest at Heartland Park

hell yeah, lets get a series together, and turn this into a points championship. if only we had TV exposure. Then it would be easier to get the money to travel. .. ahh to dream, to dream.

then speed TV would get involved and demand an oval event. lol

That, or run regional qualifying events, and hold the big event at detroit with all of the top cars. Design judging would be less exhausting for the judges, some of them would have an idea of what they will be looking at and have performance data to question the teams on.

A regional and national level deal would be sweet. Only thing is it would drag stuff later into the summer and pump up travel costs (2 events rather than 1).

TV coverage would be way tight. Get Speed to cover Detroit for like a hour special or something. I'm sure they can scavenge some time from the billion hours of nascar coverage..

but then I wouldn't get my daily fix of NBS 24/7

Hello to all!

I'm part of the TU GRAZ Racing Team and want to give you another view of things.
I've taken part in UK, Germany and Italy events in the past years since we built our first car (2004)!

Our main target over all the years was to build a car that can compete the best of the world. We are now on a very high european level, but we always knew that we have to go to the US just because there is a higher level in the top cars because they have years of experience more than every european team.

So the only way is to go to the "mother" of events: detroit

I don't think it would be a bad idea of making events where you can "qualify" for the ultimate event of the year!

If you want more events or a series (great idea!!!) go ahead and start it! The guys of FS Germany are almost all former team members of different german teams and they are doing a great job!

quote:

Originally posted by jayhawk_electrical:
time to add FSAE MidWest at Heartland Park

I think you have that wrong...East will be @ VIR.


What would be great is if they had the top 3-5 teams go to a "championship race"....that would alleviate everyone wanting to go to detroit because it would no longer be the top race.

Just to add in my 2 cents, but wasn't the point of adding West to help reduce the costs of west coast teams to travel to competitions (and to expand the series of course)? Dalhousie is a fisrt year team and we are situated on the East Coast of Nova Scotia Canada and we tried to get into East but were unsuccessful so we had to register for West. Essentially this more than tripled our travel time and costs...kinda seems counter productive to me. Perhaps there should be some sort of exemption/place holding to allow first year teams to register for the closest event.

Dave, its not impossible to register for east, you just need to register immediately when registration opens. As a first your team, I could understand you not knowing that though.

Mike

Dave_Dal,
You could look at it another way. Say if there was only one competition. Then you would not have been competing in the US until 2008. I do agree that it is not impossible to register for East, but you do have to be on your toes and ready the second registration opens.

Good luck this year and see you at WEST!

A regional system would make sense. They have it in other competitions (e.g. RoboCup) and it works well.

You can't expand FSAE beyond 120-140 teams really. It's not venue size, it's simple logistics. Silverdome, FPG, doesn't matter - there's just not enough time and volunteers to get all the static and dynamic events done.

If anything, I'd guess the reduction of FSAE East to 120 is a function of the quality of teams. My first competition (2000) was filled with teams that were working until the last moment to pass tech. The last two had a line up for early tech. The quality standards have increased dramatically. That makes it hard for design judges and dynamic events alike. Great to see and all, but it makes for a harder competition to manage.

Mike and Pablo,

Dalhousie was ready to register the minute registration opened, but we had the same problems that a lot of other teams had in that the page just didn't load fast enough for us. We finally got to the page within about 20 minutes or less, but even that was too long. Oh well, at least we still got into West and didn't have to wait another year to show off our goods. It just makes things a little more difficult for us.

dave, I think the trip to west will be well worth it. Think, no rain, sticky tires...mmm

mmm indeed. I'd have to say i enjoyed west alot more than east. standing in the howling wind and freezing rain left me with a bit of the sniffles.
the worst thing that happened during west was an ear infection i got from the swimming pool. =]
just make sure your car is ready for 100+ temps.

and insanely tight courses