Steve,

We didn't catch on fire. We just suddenly stopped a couple laps in and the car wouldn't refire. I don't know which school caught fire, but I did see the cloud of fire extinguishing chemicals.

OHH bobby how could you forget.. shame on you.

congrats though on the 3rd place. Good job guys!

also congrats to Missouri S&T on a string of great finishes

2nd and 3rd at west.. surrender the booty!

GO TERPS!!!!

"you'll never win without swaybars..."

Fail

Congrats to all the winners, especially Maryland with such a simple vehicle. Me and the others from San Jose State learned a lot just by visiting this years comp even without a car this year. We'll be back next year with our first.

We a had a ton of fun taking in everything from watching tech to listening to Claude's jokes (oh, and design feedback too!). I bet he thinks I'm a stalker now because I just kept hovering around him with a notepad.

Hope everyone travels safely!

any audio/video of the design feedback or design finals?

I can't believe it didn't sell....




I didn't see the contact between WWU and Toledo, so I can't comment on that, but there is the "Intent of the rule" that was probably invoked in the decision to allow WWU to finish endurance with only a black flag penalty.




Best pushbar at west?


The only part of the competition I'm still confused about is how Cal Poly won endurance by that much. Not taking anything away from them, they were running fast, but not 30 seconds of raw time faster than everyone else.... I don't recall ever seeing them pass anyone. I might have missed it though.

quote:

Originally posted by mtg:
CSUN on track with ringer
CSUN's ringers pay for their rides

2nd CSUN ringer doesn't pay as much for his rides
UD

What is a ringer?

quote:

Originally posted by RiNaZ:
any audio/video of the design feedback or design finals?

This is the gist of what I got from the design finals review,

The level of the top teams has come down (not many at this comp) and the level of the startup teams has improved. They liked Westerns eccentrics over UW ( / ) )

Legacy cars are only as good as the current knowledge on the team.

2 of the teams had one person that knew everything and everyone else was...for lack of a better word, average.

The part that stuck out in my mind was:

Each car had a great suspension, BUT the engineers are not great design engineers, rather they are great race engineers. Which I would have to agree, for UW this is true. Myself and Ryan put getting the car done early and doing ~1200 miles of testing over things like optimizing the drag force from the unladen front tire. However being the "design" event not the best stuff. The race engineer is for the dynamic events.

The one thing I will take away from this comp is, I wish there was a fast lap award and most passes award for endurance.

quote:

Originally posted by J. Vinella:

quote:

Originally posted by RiNaZ:
any audio/video of the design feedback or design finals?

This is the gist of what I got from the design finals review,

The level of the top teams has come down (not many at this comp) and the level of the startup teams has improved. They liked Westerns eccentrics over UW ( / ) )

Legacy cars are only as good as the current knowledge on the team.

2 of the teams had one person that knew everything and everyone else was...for lack of a better word, average.

The part that stuck out in my mind was:

Each car had a great suspension, BUT the engineers are not great design engineers, rather they are great race engineers. Which I would have to agree, for UW this is true. Myself and Ryan put getting the car done early and doing ~1200 miles of testing over things like optimizing the drag force from the unladen front tire. However being the "design" event not the best stuff. The race engineer is for the dynamic events.

The one thing I will take away from this comp is, I wish there was a fast lap award and most passes award for endurance.

Yep, I agree with you, the design final review was kinda sub-par. and i really disagree with WWU's car looking the best of all 3. Sorry WWU, it's a good looking car and fast, but michigan state's car just looked awesome.

and isn't the fast-lap award called autocross?

quote:

Originally posted by Steve O:
Biggy... I am assuming by that post you guys were the team that caught fire on the start line? If so, I've got some good pictures of your driver airborne in egress and your car getting extinguished.

Steve, can you post those pics please? I'm curious which team that was.

Some shots of that fire incident here:

http://forums.solo2.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=264&sid=33f...ff29ff3903ae19033ba8

... and here:

http://public.fotki.com/makofoto/2008---auto-cross/fsae-ca/page7.html

quote:

Originally posted by michaelwaltrip:

Yep, I agree with you, the design final review was kinda sub-par.

I didn't see anything in your quoted post about it being sub-par.

What did you not like about the design review and how can it, in your opinion, be improved in the future?

Just got back home. West was awesome and I really had a lot of fun, the racing was really close. The track was quite a bit faster than last year, similar to the speeds we saw at VIR. I really enjoy the faster tracks and I think it favors winged cars(which I think is a good development for sae!).

Anyways, hope to see a bunch of you guys at nationals this year.

Mike
University of Maryland

I'm very proud of what we've accomplished this year. We've met and exceeded our goals for 2008, finish endurance and place in the top 10. The incident with Toledo was unfortunate, but as I always say...that's racing. I'd like to say thank you to the Officials, Volunteers, and Judges for thier time, intellect, and effort this past week. It was an experience I will never forget. Shout out to UW and OSU... keep in touch and we'll go to some SCCA autox's this summer.

Western Washington University
Eric Urness - Engine

Good Job Terps Racing!

Go TERPS! Congratulations. From 99th to first in four years. Not too shabby. Keep it up and be the next powerhouse.

A great job to all teams!

It was good to have a strong showing from the Midwest Pirates, University of Kansas, you were missed!

And excellent job to my team, it was a privilege working with you all. It's good to be Big 12 Champions at something now.

Everyone better kick ass in '09!

quote:

Originally posted by 2BWise:

I don't want to make any judgements against Western Washington but according to the rule book contact is a DQ. What bothers me is that the organizers are penalizing teams for headrest infractions, but not penalizing WWU for contact with Toledo. I feel that this is a very unfair application of the rules. If you're going to enforce one rule, then all must be equally enforced.

5.7.15.4 Penalties for Moving Violations
The following are penalties and assessed times or disqualifications for moving
violations:
a. Failure to obey a flag: 1 minute
b. Over Driving (After a closed black flag): 1 Minute
c. Vehicle to Vehicle contact: DISQUALIFIED

Some things are not black and white, and application of penalties must be tempered by judgement.

SAE convened a panel of experienced and impartial (our teams didn't finish endurance) faculty advisors and officials to hear this case. We reviewed the report from the track officials and took testimony from and questioned the WWU driver.

The track officials reported the Toledo driver was given a blue flag on the previous passing zone, which he ignored. He was given a blue flag on this passing zone as well, and from his line and acceleration it appeared he was not going to pull over into the passing lane. The WWU driver accelerated to keep up. Apparently then seeing the flag, the Toledo driver braked hard to pull into the passing lane, and was hit from behind by WWU.

The panel felt a DQ was inappropriately harsh for this case. While the WWU driver admitted that he should have allowed more room, the panel felt the Toledo driver was also at fault. Neither car was damaged to the point of not being able to continue, and both cars finished endurance. WWU was given a black flag on their last lap, which cost them about 2 minutes in endurance. Toledo was given a one minute penalty for failing to obey the blue flag. The panel felt these penalties were adequate for the situation. The WWU penalty probably cost them a top 3 finish.

SAE seemed pleased with both the decision and the process. Given this incident, and the aero DQ in Detroit, I think we may see some new wording in next year's rules regarding how DQs are handled.

i was hoping someone would clear that up!!

Yeah, it would be nice to see some better consistency on DQ's. I wasn't in Detroit, but it sounds like they were pretty harsh on DQ's there, whereas the California incidents were much more reasonable rulings.

I saw the WWU and Toledo incident first-hand from not far away, and it would have been unfortunate to see somebody get DQ'd over that.

With the time and effort put into showing up to an FSAE competition, applying a DQ should not be taken lightly.