A general feeling of confusion surrounded 2004 FSAE in my mind. Skidpad starts at 8am Friday? 8:50. Endurance run order based on Autocross? Nope. Design semifinalists announced at 5:30pm Thursday? Nope. Brake workers seemed to think Lehigh with their solid axle locked the left rear but not the right rear. One of them complained a team's car was pitching under braking and almost held that team! Practice track so small teams hit bales and break suspensions. Watched a team in Design Prelim's have to explain what tire scrub meant to a judge. Running from imaginary tornados wasting half and hour of dry running time before rain came, then having workers tell teams that a decision to run will be made by 4pm, then restarting the AutoX event at 6:45pm. Explicitly describing in the AutoX drivers meeting that there is a line for first drivers and second drivers, the first driver line getting priority, and then the courseworkers letting multiple teams get second drivers run, pushing other schools back in the first driver line far enough they can't run before the rain.

I just removed a general sense that the right hand never knew what the left hand was doing at 2004 FSAE. I know our team is planning on sending letters of concern to the FSAE Consortium officials, and we are trying to get as many other teams as we can to do the same.

FSAE Competition isn't the reason we all bust our asses all year- the experience itself is worth the work, but it would be nice if the event were run as professionally as many of our teams.

yea it would be nice if it was run professionally, and to an extent it certainly is, i wasnt over there in detroit, but in australia there are similar problems

needless to say its definately NOT a tiny event, and trying to get the job done right is a big task, and all the volunteers and everything that needs to be done is a credit

its not like you can blame the tornado on the officials now is it

The brake test officials always seem to be the least organized and on top of their game. The single non-locking wheel on a solid axle brought back memories of our own experience last year at the brake test.

We had done a number of unsuccessful runs when our car failed to launch one time. We pulled it off the brake test track and found out it was a halfshaft that had slid out of the tripod. For some reason, the idiot judge at the brake test decided that this was a safey hazard and pulled our inspection sticker on the spot. He made us waste more time by going back to the inspection tent where the judge there gave us a funny look when we described why the sticker had been pulled.

How can a dislodged halfshaft be dangerous? What might happen? Oh yeah, the car might lose power and stop moving. Very dangerous.... It seemed to us like he was just using his power as a judge because he didn't like the fact that we kept bothering him to run repeated brake tests. He was a jerk to say the least

And no, the halfshaft could not have worked its way out and hit a car behind us. It was not sliding out far enough.

Although Lehigh's overall performance can not be blamed on the organizers, I have MANY issues with what I heard went on there.

The general attitude at competition seems to be to treat us either as criminals or bratty children. I've seen and heard this attitude in tech inspection, brake testing, design judging and don't get me started on the endurance.

On that last subject, I speak not from personal experience (we deserved to flunk the endurance) but I can only say for some teams, my heart goes out to you.

Maybe we should inspect the organizer's personal cars for trace fluid leaks and see how well they do.

There's a lot more I want to say but I gotta get back to work, I'll have to rant later.

At least they made a real autocross and endurance track this year. If everything else sucked, I'd still be happy about having real courses to drive on. The previous courses were retarded- this year they showed that you can have a fast, fun, safe course where there aren't many cones hit or spins.

The track finally was consistent with what the cars are supposed to be designed for- the weekend autocrosser.

We wouldn't know - we never ran it and missing the autocross is what I am most pissed about. Since the car was designed to take advantage of the tight autocross, it would have been nice to get some data on how it behaved if this course was different.

Oh well, they only have a year to wait, then another year to evaluate the results...

I will agree to the utter confusion that went on at this year's compeition. This was my third time around coming to Pontiac and this was the worst by far. However I am willing to realize that those problems are most likely because the event was in an entirely new part of the parking lot and the organizers didn't have a feel for how teams would like or dislike them.

Each and everyone who had a problem with the compeition should write Kathleen McDonald a respectfull email as to how the compeition could be done better in the future.

It's very interesting to hear what your all saying over the pond, i'm in the Uk and was racing at last years Uk compertion and did'nt really have a big complaint about the british event. It amazes me what you guys are saying happens over there, test tracks that are so small they cause accidnets, thats crazy!!! That was one of the things that got me at last years Uk event, you have so many teams that finish there cars that week or a few days before and instead of having a proper test track you have a stupid figure of eight, where you can put any loads into anything.

Intersting what you say about the SCCA tho, ours was run by the 750 Motor Club which is the UK equivilant, they run race track series for the under funded racer. I think they did a great job.I did think it was funny that they measured the track length wrong for the Endurance, Cheers to Toronto for pointing that out!!!

And to add insalt to injurry, our car last year after the driver change in the endurance had a throttle that was stuck wide open with our master of a driver driving on the brake and clutch, it did this for about 5 -6 laps with no bother, then a lap before it was pulled in it started to boil the water and was spraying water out of the top of the water bottles like chalmers did before it cault fire. they decided that was enought.

So i'd be intersted to hear what the teams that regually race in the UK and raced at this years US event thought??

Also thing to all the marshalls i talked to were really good, seamed thay were they becasue they loved cars!!!

Maybe more of you Americans should come over next year and see how it's all done!!! ( i do realise our comp is half the size of yours)

My view:

They shouldn't have let teams run their second drivers in Autocross when they specifically said they would run all the first drivers.

Charlie from Auburn told me, they ran their first driver, and were ready to run their second driver and just wanted to be sure that they'd be first in line for the 2nd driver. Instead, the marshall signalled for them to send out their second driver...... bullocks.

My only other beef is the layout of cones. I spent the first 2 laps very cautious because I felt the cone layout was pretty scarce. The track was SUPER bumpy and much more high speed compared to traditional FSAE tracks.....where were the slaloms in the enduro??

I noticed that many teams shortened their wheelbases this year and went to what I call the "Tokyo Denki sized" era of FSAE cars......real small, real short wheelbases. But the teams made this decision only to negotiate the tight tracks that included slaloms of tradition.

The track we ran was REALLY fast....guys at Rolla and UTA loved it I bet! ....where I went into 2 turns watch'n MSU lift inside wheels!

I also got a black flag for apparently ignoring a blue flag. My beef about this is: I had been out for 3 laps. During each of the first 2 laps, I got blue flagged and pulled into the passee lane. WHY then would I decide to ignore a 3rd blue flag??? I really didn't see it, and the 1 minute penalty hurt us. The course marshall told me "you should be looking for flags"........ shouldn't I be focusing on racing?? I watched every single course worker from that point on and noticed that 80% of them didn't even have flags in their pocession!

Those were my only beefs. Other then that, it was quite fun! I enjoyed seeing the quality and organization of other teams step up.

Now off to Formula Student!

Cheers,

Vinh

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Originally posted by fsae_alum:
Second, have SCCA come on board and run the event. If there's one thing that SCCA is, it's that their notoriously fair to everybody involved (teams that is). That's an interesting concept...having a company that is in the business of running racing events run....a racing event (as opposed to a bunch of big 3 engineers). Unfortunately, it sounds as if the event is getting way to big for the same old organizers to control logistically. It's no longer the competition it was 10 years ago.

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The SCCA is part of the FSAE Consortium, they set up the autoX and endurance tracks, and supply most of the courseworkers! Howard Duncan, the SCCA Solo chair comes to Pontiac every year.

Yeah, I know at MSU, our car was better suited for smaller, tighter tracks. However, we tested it in a wide range of conditions, and never once noticed the tires coming off the ground like that. Throughout all the extensive testing given to it, the issue never arose.

Obviously we can't blame what happened entirely on the track. It was just an unfortunate situation considering we were getting pretty good lap times, and got pulled from the race with about 2 laps to go.

Regardless, the teams that ranked high deserve their rankings. No event is going to end flawlessly, so let's get ready for next year.

overall, i think the location tends to be what screws everything up. the result of the location is the weather. tornados and thunder storms just do not lend themselves to racing. still, i would like to think that there are some better judges out there that would like to be involved in the program. i don't mean to be rude since our judge was very happy to spend well over an hour talking with us on saturday after our endurance run, but i would like to think that every judge there (at least those who focus on suspension) would have a reasonable understanding of the what and why of ackerman (and more just as importantly, anti-ackerman) steering geometry. there's something wrong if students need to explain things like tire scrub and ackerman to the judges. hopefully next year we can better present ourselves for design and be lucky enough to have judges that already understand the underlying principles on which we engineered our car.

Rant #1 (I feel more coming...)

Judges wanting to know why having "less weight" is better. Give me a frigging break.

Last year they obviously had counted our car out as a design contender before we even showed up - for christ's sake there wasn't a question that I didn't answer, but that didn't matter as the judges looked about as interested as me dozing in an electrical engineering lecture.

This year it was the opposite. One year of excellent design work sunk because of lack of sleep, which prevented them from feeding the judges the buzzwords they wanted to hear.

And the autocross, with all due respect FUCK ANYBODY THAT ORGANIZED THAT SHITTY EVENT

First they let teams run on dry tires. After it rained, no one was able to run on dry tires even though the course dried out! Since they already threw fairness out the window, who cares? Since Hoosier decided to close early and bluntly refused to mount our wets (how much money did we spend on their tires? At least $1500). The final insult was that after the team took the wheels apart and mounted rain tires manually, they closed the fucking course ahead of schedule!

I have tried to be fair in the past but FSAE '04 gets a big thumbs down from Angry Joe.

Angry Joe, you oughta take that down a notch.

No doubt there's room for improvement, but these people do their best to organize an event that is the highlight of all of our college careers, people who put in extra time because they love it. The judges and stewards and track marshalls are almost all volunteers.

Cussing them out like that reflects poorly on you, and worse, on your team. Don't sign with your team name if you're gonna step that far out of line.

Let me begin.......

Granted things could always go better, I must say, I was choked on many occassions....

1.) First pass through tech, the judge didn't like my Rubbermaid catch can that I had oven tested to 250°F without troubles. No big deal, go to Walmart and get a new one. Go to GM for the tour, and see the Cadillac CTS....with that same Rubbermaid catch can, held on by one zip tie. BOO JUDGE with big moustache!!

2.) After fixing that, a new judge proceeded to ask why we had changed that, yet didn't have a safety wire on a bolt that has never been safety wired EVER, and has passes tech 3 times before. Drilling through the head on a 1/2" Grade 8 bolt sucks, and held us off from making brake and noise Thursday.

3.) First pass through brakes, one judge claimed that the right rear didn't lock, but the rest did, the other claimed that the left rear didn't lock and the rest did. My video seems to show that they all did. Engine stumbled and stalled while lining up again, and pushed us to the back of the line. Hello tornado, bye bye autocross.

4.) What d'ya know, passed brakes with flying colors at 7:00 Saturday....on sopping wet conditions! Why make me wait!

5.) BOO STEVENS from New Jersey. Pay attention in the drivers meeting. 6 laps to go, and I'm hot on their tail. See a flag coming up near the straight at the North end. BLUE! BLUE! BLUE!....nope, yellow. Apparently yellow means stop. I almost ran into that purple 727lb monster, stalled, and couldn't start for some reason. I wanted to kick the driver in the head. Yellow=slow!

Overall, I wrote a three page document for my team-mates to try smooth out the rough edges. I can't blame all of the bad luck on the folks who ran the competition, but some of it was BS.

Not everyone can be first through tech, which means that perhaps the event is simply getting too big for the staff. How long should the line be for autocross....or for tech? Why should a car be allowed to run the practice track with an inside wheel lifting and end up rolling? A lot of sketchy stuff went right by, and at the same time, a lot of nicely built stuff, ALA UTA, didn't get a full go of it because they dribbled a bit of oil from their diff. My diff had 2 to 3 ounces of oil in it for the events, and worked great. If it had dripped, WHO CARES? Someone could have been very easily killed by the rolling car, or by the cars that hit the bales on the practice track, and nearly hit the other cars and people in the braking line.

I loved being there, and had an absolute blast, but I must say things could definitely have improved. The lack of communication left all of us wondering, and many of us disappointed. Angry Joe, I know you guys were right behind me in the line for endurance, and had a wild car. Keep up the good work. As I heard way too many times..."that's racing"

I had to think a bit before commenting on the posts here - at least regarding the design event. (I haven't been asked to get involved in a performance event decision since rain hit the 1993 competition.) Some of the comments are understandable if a team is disappointed. However one or two of the posts would not make me favorably disposed to hire the person(s) making them if I was in a position to do so. Lots of folks read things here, including some of your potential employers, so keep that in mind.

As most here know, I've been involved in SAE student activities for over a quarter century. I was a student, safety official, competition organizer, instigator, member and chair of the committee which oversees these competitions. I've also been a faculty advisor - in a couple of different incarnations. Save for 2003, I've been a FSAE design judge since 1999.

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i don't mean to be rude since our judge was very happy to spend well over an hour talking with us on saturday after our endurance run, but i would like to think that every judge there (at least those who focus on suspension) would have a reasonable understanding of the what and why of ackerman (and more just as importantly, anti-ackerman) steering geometry. there's something wrong if students need to explain things like tire scrub and ackerman to the judges. hopefully next year we can better present ourselves for design and be lucky enough to have judges that already understand the underlying principles on which we engineered our car.

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I don't know who you spoke with, but all of the motorsports judges specializing in suspension and chassis (and for the most part, we're the ones wandering around all weekend - even into the wee hours of the night) understand those underlying principals. In fact, this competition is one of the few chances some of us get to sit together and discuss such things. Your message wasn't clear, but it sounds to me like the judge you spoke with disagreed with your design decision re: your Ackerman setting.

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Judges wanting to know why having "less weight" is better. Give me a frigging break.

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Why is "less weight" better Joe? <grin>

Perhaps they were trying to elicit from you why you did what you did, and what compromises you had to make to get the weight down.

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Last year they obviously had counted our car out as a design contender before we even showed up

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If your car was good, it got a fair shot. Guess what? Only 10-20 cars make the design semi-finals each year. Perhaps other cars were better?

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One year of excellent design work sunk because of lack of sleep, which prevented them from feeding the judges the buzzwords they wanted to hear.

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YOUR job is to show up with your car and team prepared to give us your best shot. It is not the design judges fault that you didn't get any sleep. You couldn't designate at least one person to answer questions and have that person well rested? We say this year after year. It is also not just a question of "feeding the design judges the buzzwords they wanted to hear". We quiz you on basic knowledge of vehicle dynamics, mechanical design, etc. We do that because we've had teams show up with cars which are similar to previous years' without any knowledge of why they did what they did. We are coming down harder each year on teams which don't exhibit such understanding.

- Dick

My main argument with the design judging was that we spent 15 minutes discussing the theory of suspension and nothing about our car. And when we get the sheet back from the judges, there were no comments on what we could of improved on. All it said was neat...clean... and something else. Almost never was a question directed towards any of the design of our actual car which is crazy. I know they are trying to get an idea of our knowledge of the subject, but isn't our car at least partially representative of that? All in all, I was the most dissapointed with the judges lack of feedback, which is key to improving design.

J Mac

You didn't indicate what school you were from.

How to provide feedback is one of the things we struggle with every year. I don't know who was handing out forms, but suspect that it was Jay.

In that first round, we have a 30 minute time slot. In that time period, we have to quiz you. We're also looking at the car as we go along. (I often tell the student group that we're not being rude, but rather that we're just trying to get as much done as we can in the allotted time frame.) The time frame usually means that we have 20 minutes to meet with you, and then allow 5 minutes for any additional questions, etc. We have to allow 5 minutes to make the transition from one car to another, and in that 5 minutes, we have to come up with a score, make some notes, etc. That isn't a lot of time.

If you read Carroll's "Everything You Wanted to Know About Design Judging, but Waited Too Long to Ask", you'll find the following re: the judges not noticing some bit you're proud of:

"It is your responsibility to bring them to the judges’ attention."

As well as:

"The teams’ opportunities do not end with design judging. For the length of the contest, design judges are wandering the paddock ready and willing to discuss the details of each and every car. This is a priceless learning opportunity that far too many teams fail to take advantage of. The judges will probably not come to you. We are easy to spot. Stop us and ask us to look at your car – we will all enjoy the experience."

I did something re: design judging on the old GT list-serve years ago. Carroll wrote this up a year or so later. It's all still valid, and I am amazed at how many haven't read it - even though it, and the list of terms we expect you to have an understanding of, are all on the SAE website.

- Dick

First, let me clarify that I am an alumni and could not make it to the competition. I work near Lehigh and as such got to see the car come together so I still talk like I'm on the team...

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Why is "less weight" better Joe? <grin>

Perhaps they were trying to elicit from you why you did what you did, and what compromises you had to make to get the weight down.

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F=ma, F=mv^2/r. Less mass to move around means the car can change direction or speed more quickly given the same inputs. Less unsprung weight means less mass for the suspension to control, less rotational resistance to acceleration and braking. That's elementary physics.

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If your car was good, it got a fair shot. Guess what? Only 10-20 cars make the design semi-finals each year. Perhaps other cars were better?

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I have no problem with other cars being better. But the judges didn't even seem to try. They did not grill me. There were very few questions that we could not answer to their satisfaction. There was not a single point where we did not demonstrate a clear understanding of the design of the vehicle. If they were truely trying to test us, why did they not challenge the ideas they did not agree with? The concepts we lacked? The compromises we made? It especially irks me because they did poorly this year because they apparently did not demonstrate an understanding of design concepts. Yet my personal experience was the exact opposite.

I am not saying our car should have won design. I am saying they did not seem to care enough to find out if it deserved a chance.

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__YOUR__ job is to show up with your car and team prepared to give us your best shot. It is not the design judges fault that you didn't get any sleep. You couldn't designate at least one person to answer questions and have that person well rested? We say this year after year. It is also not just a question of "feeding the design judges the buzzwords they wanted to hear". We quiz you on basic knowledge of vehicle dynamics, mechanical design, etc. We do that because we've had teams show up with cars which are similar to previous years' without any knowledge of why they did what they did. We are coming down harder each year on teams which don't exhibit such understanding.

- Dick

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Okay, I was starting to get out of control with that comment. However I think it is possible to demonstrate that a design is not copied without getting into such intense nitpicking. If the design is understood, they should be able to explain the compromises in suspension geometry they made for 10" wheels. They shouldn't have to explain why less weight is better.

Sorry for the harshness. I have given them the benefit of the dount for years. But I can't ignore the number of incidents, design related or otherwise in which teams (far more than just ours) were treated with a complete lack of courtesy and respect. If the attitude is so condescending during brake testing, I begin to wonder what goes on in design...

It's hard for me to respond to the last comment, other than to say that the folks I deal with in design are all aware of the thousands of hours which go into these things. In fact, I designed and built cars myself as a student - twice. Nothing has changed in the 25 years since that time.

I've also been involved (as a faculty advisor) in a competition in which the top two places were decided by an event which was improperly run and for which protests were ignored.

I'm out of the performance event loop, and as such don't know what happened. If I did know, I would be sending recommendations for change to the FSAE rules committee and the consortium and not posting them here. (That's protocol for me.)

I do understand that everyone wants to be in the design semi-finals, but the reality is that not everyone can.

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Is FSAE becoming a competition for the elite?

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This has been debated on and off for the 25 years I've been involved - across all of the student design competitions. The top schools are there for a reason. They are "elite" for a reason. It is within every school's power to get there. Each has advantages, as well as challenges. You'll find that some of the "elite" schools have some of the same problems you do - they've overcome them. Occasionally we find something out of place and have to point it out. (I am in the process of doing that. No, it won't be posted here - see my earlier comments.)

On the other hand, if you have constructive suggestions for improvement, you have a protocol for submitting them through Kathleen. Write up those suggestions and submit them.

- Dick