Joe,

Thank you for your work and for the willingness to discuss potential improvements. Hopefully everybody has an understanding that it takes a Herculean effort by all the event organizers and volunteers just to pull this event off. To expect the event to run without any hiccups, especially with Mother Nature weighing in, would be ridiculous.

As an area of improvement: The autocross course workers do not seem to be as aggressive with the red flags as they should be. Last year, I missed one red flag because the course worker was so far from the course. This year our team ended up rather close to a spinout before being red flagged. There must be a way to instantly communicate to the course workers when a car is stopped ahead and I would rather the autocross course workers are a little too quick with the red flag then to be a little to slow. They can always give a team another re-run.

Once again, thank you for everything you and your course workers do. It is a shame that your post had to be somewhat defensive in nature due to the offensive tone of a few.

Joe-

The event had problems. They were well discuused here and by yourself. Take solice in the fact that out of all the hundreds of students in attendance, you only got chastised by someone who was not even THERE!

Thanks for a great effort, the circumstances were tough and we owe our team's existance to the volunteers for sure.

To the suggestion that there should be a special FSAE track with a perfect surface... and I don't intend for my answer to sound smarta##... if you walk almost any racetrack in the world you'd find cracks and lumps and bumps. Part of the challenge is designing a car that can win in real-world situations.

If a smooth surface were the hallmark of all famous tracks LeMans, Darlington (US) and Sebring (yikes!) would never run them. If you master these tracks, though - you da man!

...That and the fact that it would cost about $50,000 to build even a large parking lot!

I would agree that the practice track this year was too small. Not that you should actually NEED a practice track, but if FSAE is going to have one make it decent size.

There was a rather famous incident some years (15-20) back at either Long Beach or Detroit, when F1 ran there. All of the teams were complaining about a particular bump in the track. The Late Ken Tyrell cut off the discussion by saying:

"So there's a bump! Surely of all the people in the world, we should be able to deal with it!"

- Dick

quote:

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Originally posted by JPaolicchi:
Hi all, I was the SAE autocross event captian for this FSAE 2004...
Regards,
Joe

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Thanks for giving us the insider's perspective, I really appreciate you taking the competitors seriously.

quote:

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Originally posted by Bert15:
I would agree that the practice track this year was too small. Not that you should actually NEED a practice track, but if FSAE is going to have one make it decent size.

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If you don't need a practice track, you are doing one or more of the following:

1) Running the same suspension setup for every event, which sounds sub optimal to me (but I wasn't a suspension guy...).

2) Making suspension changes blindly at a track you've never driven the car on, based on data from the asphalt back at school, without checking how the car feels, which sounds silly to me.

3) Driving a car that is always perfectly set up, never needs to be adjusted, and cannot be improved, which sounds unlikely to me.

4) Running your events without "shaking-in" the car, listening for rattles, making sure it feels right, checking leaks before the endurance, etc.

Even a small practice track where you can run some circles is invaluable.

Watch the top teams and their use of the practice area and I think you'll agree there's nothing embarassing about "needing" the practice track.

quote:

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Originally posted by JPaolicchi:
Autocross Event Organization

Hi all, I was the SAE autocross event captian for this FSAE 2004. I am certianly willing to discuss with anyone how the event was run and what improvements can be made.


In general, the ever increasing size of the competition and the new location caused difficulties for us this year. I believe it was the first "wet" autocross. I know we can do better next time. The one big problem I can see is that it was very difficult to communicate to everyone during the rain period and when the event was running. I don't know how to fix this. During the event, I believed that all of available cars were at dynamic area.

Regards,
Joe

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Joe,
I was pleasantly surprised to see the autocross course this year- it resembled an actual SCCA course with quite a few places where good strategy could pay off nicely.
Good job on the course! It was fast, fun, safe, and not many cones were hit.

2005 Update-

Others will have opinions too I'm sure, but I had no complaints with the way the event was run this year. Thanks to everyone that helped make this happen!

Great weather for dynamic events never hurts, clearly, made for a great last blast at the Silverdome site, which should be rubble by this time next year. Hopefully 2006 goes as smoothly!

-RG