2016 Formula Student Germany

[BeunMan]

FSG is getting closer here's some info already:

* Timekeeping (http://tk.formulastudent.de)
* FSC schedule (https://www.formulastudent.de/fsc/2016/schedule/) and FSE Schedule (https://www.formulastudent.de/fse/2016/schedule/)
* Website (http://www.formulastudent.de) and Mobile website (https://www.formulastudent.de/m)
* FormulaStudentTV (youtube) (https://www.youtube.com/user/FormulaStudentTV)

Twitter:
@FSGinside for 'inside info'
@FSGTimekeeping for info from the tk-van
@FormulaStudentG

[JSR]

Sad to see that one team took their battery pack back to the hotel, just to have a thermal runaway. Hope the injured students gets well soon!

https://www.formulastudent.de/press-pr/news/news-details/article/incident-at-hotel-in-hockenheim/

Local article, in german:
http://www.heidelberg24.de/region/hockenheim-zimmer-hotel-karlsruher-strasse-ausgebrannt-drei-verletzte-6649509.html

[Dunk Mckay]

Congratulations to all who competed. Seems like it was another well run event.

Anyone got any good gossip, or inside information as to the challenges some of the teams faced?

From scoreboards it looks like GFR couldn't get their combustion car started back up after driver change, costing them dearly. Anyone know what happened?

[JasperC]

I was watching the live stream and you could hear GFR cranking the engine at a lamentable speed. Could be insufficient battery charge, or perhaps there were a few failed attempts at a proper speed first (a hot single is always tricky), and the battery ran out because of that. Whatever the cause was, it was heart breaking. I remember very well how it feels to lose a near-certain overall victory during the driver change, so I hope the guys are already focused on the next competition and wish them the best of luck.

Big congratulations to Karlsruhe for winning FSE. They have been among the best teams for so many years, and it's great to finally see them taking the big one home. I'm sure the whole FS community is happy to see them win. :)

[Thijs]

I remember very well how it feels to lose a near-certain overall victory during the driver change

It was of course heart breaking, but for what it's worth: I don't think GFR was on track to defending their title. Up until driver change, they were about 3 seconds off pace in the endurance compared to TU Munich. They were on track to a 3rd or 2nd position overall.
Their efficiency score and second driver speed are of course unknown. However, based on lap times in Austria the second driver is a bit faster, but not enough to make up for a 3s gap on average.

Looking back, Munich was pretty dominant this weekend and would have had an even clearer win even with GFR finishing endurance, had it not been for a botched acceleration where they only got 3.5 points.

[Thijs]

One of the things I noticed was Monash's performance. Even though they scored points in every event, they finished 21st overall. That would have been a bit higher without the penalty and without some problems at autocross.
When they were last in Germany, in 2014, they were on track to finishing 2nd overall had they not DNF'd in the final lap of endurance, if I'm correct. And even with 0 points for endurance, that year's team finished higher, and with more points than this year..

Does this say anything about the current level of the Australian competition? They are the 7-time defending champion after all. Or did Monash just have a bad weekend?

Thijs

[JulianH]

Yes Thijs, I have to agree.

Was really sad to see Monash struggeling throughout the whole European trip this year. From Silverstone via Spielberg to Hockenheim, they never showed anything close to what was expected.
Not even in their strong suit, the Skidpad they were able to post times that they did in earlier years.

I know that they had a lot of issues (as it was quite obvious during AutoX on Saturday) but still a bit disappointing.

Also sad to see that the new Continental tires caused problems for two strong teams during Endurance. Hope the guys can fix it until Spain.

But awesome performance by Karlsruhe and Munich. It is really great to see some "new" faces (besides the "typical" GFR, Delft, Stuttgart and Zurich winnners) up there. Congratulations to both teams. Espeically to Karlsruhe; dominant throughout the week, awesome stuff and highly deserved!

(Also huge tip of the hat for my former team. Killing your AutoX victory and taking a 15pt "penalty" in such a tight competition by acknowledging a cone is a great thing. I'm very sure that "back in my days" a lot of teams would have done that differently. Great job guys, am really proud!)

[DougMilliken]

> Also sad to see that the new Continental tires caused problems for two strong teams during Endurance.

Can you be more specific about these tire problems? Just curious (and possibly looking ahead to a future TTC tire test).

[JulianH]

> Also sad to see that the new Continental tires caused problems for two strong teams during Endurance.

Can you be more specific about these tire problems? Just curious (and possibly looking ahead to a future TTC tire test).

Doug,

both Hawks and Zurich had a tire going of the rim, ending their Endurance run.
They probably are both curious how you handle the high-grip surface at your tests without this issue ;)

[Kevin Hayward]

Doug,

both Hawks and Zurich had a tire going of the rim, ending their Endurance run.
They probably are both curious how you handle the high-grip surface at your tests without this issue ;)

Julian,

You wouldn't know how much of a safety bead those teams run do you? I have seen some very marginal attempts of this feature on many student designed rims. A decent safety bead can keep a tire on fully deflated at high loads.

Another method would be to screw into the tire beads radially.

There are also internal spacers that can be used (and are in off-roading).

Definitely something that can be accounted for in design.

Kev

[JulianH]

Julian,

You wouldn't know how much of a safety bead those teams run do you? I have seen some very marginal attempts of this feature on many student designed rims. A decent safety bead can keep a tire on fully deflated at high loads.

Another method would be to screw into the tire beads radially.

There are also internal spacers that can be used (and are in off-roading).

Definitely something that can be accounted for in design.

Kev

Kev,

I don't know what Hamburg is doing, but Zurich is running off-the-shelf Keizer shells after they had some issues with their CFRP rims.

[Claude Rouelle]

A few years ago we saw Prototype cars coming back after 2 or 3 laps with "hot" tire pressure that were lower than the "cold" ones they had when they left the pitlane.
The reason was that a sudden change of the tire side and vertical loads on the curbs of a chicane made the base of the tire wall move on the horizontal part of the rim (called the hump) that was not long enough and/or did not have a ledge.
In the first few laps, or even the first few corners, without enough pressure built, the tire carcass flexed a lot and in some conditions of lateral and vertical tire load, the movement for just a fraction of a second was big enough to have the nitrogen get out of the tire
Remember also that the tire carcass stiffness variation is the biggest in the first laps of a brand new tire
Claude

[Factory_P]

Well, a good re-design of the rim's bead should be enough.

However, I haven't seen any rule regarding what pressures the teams are allowed to use in order to get the tyre in position. With an over-extreme design, the tyres can require a lot of pressure to jump the bead and get in position, and your rim may not withstand this.

If it fails, half of the rim will go flying through the room. It is super-dangerous.

I am actually quite surprised this is not covered by the rules. Being involved in Rallycross, Rallying and Off-Road rallying right now, I can tell you there is a maximum tyre pressure in all of these series. And even then, a guy almost got killed last year when he left the tyre grease dry out in the sun before inflating the tyre. The grease got sticky, he didn't pay attention and the pressure reached 15 bars before the tyre jumped in place, sheering the rim in 2 pieces and throwing one part 50m in the air.
There may be room for a rule change there.

[NickFavazzo]

Alternatively, like any engineer should do after identifying a potentially dangerous situation, is analysis their design, proof test and rate their rim, UWAM tested to failure a few of the earlier rims (before my time), as such, we had a number not to go past.

There are so many things that can be dangerous if the risks of failure are not controlled. Why is there not a focus on inadequately designed wishbones? (I'm not saying the most recent failure was poor design, I wasn't there, so no offense is intended)

The last thing we need is additional knee-jerk rules

[DougMilliken]

Thanks to all for your replies. We call this failure a de-bead or debead. Sorry to hear that this ended endurance for two teams.

During TTC testing at Calspan TIRF this has happened a few times--at low pressure, cornering under high load (it also happens occasionally with larger tires). Often, there is enough airflow through the regulator and rotary union to re-inflate the tire and continue the lab test, so only one slip angle sweep is compromised. If a tire/rim is marginal, I've seen the bead start to crawl away from the flange and then pop back on when the steer angle reverses. A related problem is rotational slippage between the tire and rim during drive-brake testing. Various bead locking mechanisms are discussed in the TTC forum. From memory, we have had the TIRF staff mount tires dry, minimizing lubrication seems to help. They are very careful about overpressure during bead seating!

[Claude Rouelle]

Guys,
I do not know any racing series where there is a rule about maximum tire pressure. However there are a few racing series with a minimum tire pressure, Formula One being one of them.
But for God sake do not bring that rule into Formula Student.
Because
a) Formula Student is not racing
b) It is going to make the rule book even unnecessarily thicker
c) It is really hard to monitor and control as there are so many factors to consider: quality of the inflating gas, humidity, atmospheric pressure, ambient temperature, are we regulating the cold or hot pressure, how do you define hot pressure? After 75 mm of acceleration, after one stint of endurance? Will FSUK participants be disqualified for a tire pressure 0.02 bar under the rule limit? Come on...
d) It is the responsibility of the team to make an engineering decision where the adequate pressure stands, as a compromise between performance, performance consistency and reliability.
Claude

[MCoach]

I wouldn't be surprised if low starting tire pressures were at play or the wheel loads may have been too high for the shell. The Keizer and especially Douglas rims are notably compliant.
Last year, we noticed one of our wheels seemed to have a "wobble" to it when we got to competition and replaced it. Rolled to autocross on 4 shiny new wheels -- came back from autocross with 4 new wobbly wheels.
I have also been able to bend 13" Keizer and 10" Douglas wheel shells by hand and I'm not very a big person.



I've run 13" Hoosier and Goodyear and 10" Hoosier tires down in tire pressure until they debeaded. Sometimes it's just nice to know. :)
I've also run FSAE events on 0 psi (gauge) previously on purpose without issue, so don't get all up in arms about minimum tire pressure rules either...
Last thing we need is more rules.

[Claude Rouelle]

Thijs and all,

Australian team members are for sure as well educated, disciplined and passionate as any other team members in the world.

They do not have as much potential sponsors, they not have the manufacturing habits/excellence that we can see in Germany (but it is not as if Australian manufacturing is bad) and the distance to Europe and the US is an issue...
.....but I do not believe that explains the lack of performance in foreign competitions.
I think the main issue is that, in simple words, the professionalism of the best FS teams has been exponential while the Australian teams progression is linear.
The constant weight (if not in fact an increasing weight) of Monash car is an illustration of this low performance slope.
In other words, it seems Australian students do not know what they do not know and I am not sure they do whatever is possible to discover what is missing.
The few Australian teams I know well seem to be having a good team spirit, a good cohesion, they know how to have fun (it is important) but the awareness of the level of needed excellence to be competitive seems to be not well defined and/or not well integrated.
Formula student is about offering the students the opportunity to learn by doing, but in a competitive and connected world it is also about learning quickly.
Meanwhile, even with a low absolute value for now, progress slopes of Chinese and Indian teams are impressive and should not be disregarded.

[JulianH]

Would be great to have Scott Wordley's take on the performance of Monash.
Let's hope their "distraction" with the Electric car (very tough to build even 2 cars if you are as budget-constrained as Claude is assuming) does not "dilute" the performance even more.

I'm sure those guys will bounce back and we will have a competitve Aussie team at FSG 2018!

Claude,

fully agree with you on the trajectory of the Chinese teams. We were amazed by the performance of that 222 Chinese team that rocked AutoX.
They placed 13th and outperformed very good "Western" teams like UAS Karlsruhe, Kassel, Washington, Weingarten or Ann Arbor.
Job very well done.
The Indian teams seem to continue to struggle a bit but also a step forward!

Sadly, the number of (German) teams that should at least have the chance to have decent funding (and therefore no excuse on that front) and showed very poor performance was also very high.
I know, I lived in a fairytale bubble of FSAE in my time, but what the heck is going wrong there?

I don't want to "point fingers" but now I'm calling the following teams to better understand, why they weren't driving or why they were not as fast as expected (>15sec OFF PACE in AutpX). I know that difficulties can arise; but for German teams FSG is the absolute (and sometimes only) highlight of the year. They present themselvs to Sponsors here. They are on fire... They probably will never be better prepared but still there were issues. I want to understand, so please:

FSE (some very well established!): Kaiserslautern, Hannover, Braunschweig, Cologne, Nürnberg, Deggendorf, Illmenau, Aalen (they are quite new to be honest...),
FSC: Wuppertal, Dortmund TU, Dortmund UAS (come on Dortmund, why not merge the teams?!), Schweinfurt

Thanks for enlightening me. I hope I can understand the issues (even after Vehicle Status Videos that you all passed) better, so that I can help teams better in the future with that knowledge.

Best
Julian

[Factory_P]

Reading your reply Claude, I wonder if I expressed myself correctly.

I was just talking about a maximum pressure used to get the tyre in position on the rim. Then, drive at the pressure you feel best suited to your needs obviously.

I meant this just for the safety of the people putting the tyres on.

[Claude Rouelle]

Factory-P and all,

Tire pressure when you inflate the tire....

If you go on a racing circuit you will notice that race tire manufacturers do inflate the tire in a cage.
Want a story? 15 years ago in the ALMS paddock, a Michelin service engineer, whom I knew from the late 80s in Formula 3, nearly lost his life.
The tire did not exploded under the inflating pressure; the rim imploded! Rim manufacturing problem, lack of homogeneity in the casting of one of the spoke. Should have been seen in quality control but wasn't.
A piece of rim clipped a piece of his ear. Another rim part went through the truck awning and was found in the paddock 400 meters from the truck. The guy could not hear for 2 weeks.
If he would have had his head 50 mm away from where it was he would have been killed. Since that time Michelin and then others race tire manufacturers only inflate the tire in a steel cage.
The Michelin race engineer is well and still working these days; I saw him at Le Mans 24 hours this year. But that day the gods where with him. Racing can be dangerous and not only on the circuit.

[SennaH]

Hello Julian and all,

I am one of the development engineers of the Continental Tire.

Firstly, I want to say that we at Continental feel very sorry for AMZ and HAWKS.
We understand that this kind of DNF is very uncommon and especially disappointing for the teams.

I would like to use the opportunity of this discussion to share some advice.
I strongly encourage the teams to use rim contours that are PROPERLY designed for bead retention (i.e. contours with a standardized hump).
There are standards available (e.g. ETRTO standards manual in Europe) that cover the aspects of rim design.
Please have a look into it and consider it when designing your rims or purchasing new rims.

@Julian: Unfortunately, your statement in the beginning already sounded a little bit like finger pointing (i.e. "the new Continental tires caused problems").
Please let us consider the facts before claiming any responsibility! For example: Off-the-shelf rims don't necessarily have a hump.

P.S: Regarding the mounting: The safety advice on our tires states to not exceed 40 PSI (275 KPa) to seat the beads. I know most people don't read until this point. ;)
But really: If the beads are not seated at this pressure, deflate, try again (maybe add some more lubricant). It's for your own safety!

Best regards,
Hannes

[JulianH]

Hannes,

I did not want to point fingers at all.
Of course the teams are responsible for a functioning system when they "merge" buy-parts. Be that Conti tires or Keizer shells. The system must work and that's the responsibility of the team.
Both teams seem to have "failed" here.

Probably this is due to the fact that the (new?) Conti tire has some prerequisits to a rim that the teams don't know about from their previous choises, be it a 10" Hoosier or a Goodyear Eagle or the "old" Conti.
Or maybe it is something else.

I just wanted to point out that this issue did not seem to be a problem in former competitions. In fact, I witnessed all AutoX at FSG since ~2009 and never have seen a tire slipping of the rim of a "top" team.
This year it happened twice. Both times with the Conti. So at least there is a link...

I hope you guys continue in your great support of the Conti teams and hopefully you have a trick up your experienced sleeve to give the teams a tip, how they can prevent the same issue in Spain (and how to improve designs for 2017 ;)).

cheers

[Thijs]

Claude,
Thanks for your insights on how Australian teams approach the competition.

I too was pleasantly surprised by the track speed of the Shiyan car, both in autocross and endurance by the way.
I was also impressed with the efforts and the team work by the Manipal team that has gone into trying to completely start over compared to their previous designs, and showing up with a 200kg car.


Mostly unrelated, except that I only noticed because I went back to look at the Shiyan's final score, I think there might be a mistake in either the endurance or the efficiency scores of FSC:
Washington, Wroclaw and Shiyan all finished 18 laps of endurance, but don't have an endurance score, which would indicate a DQ for whatever reason. However, all three of them do have an efficiency score.
Either that is a mistake, or the mistake is that they got 0 points on endurance. Am I missing a third option?

The FSE teams that got DQ'd after endurance (Ravensburg, Osnabrück, München UAS, Zwickau), all got 0 points on efficiency.

[JulianH]

Thijs,
If I had to put my money down, I'd say they got a DQ and it was forgotten to remove them from the Efficiency results.
Same thing happened so that GFRe was awarded the Efficiency Award at first before they where removed from the Efficiency event as well.

(Just found it on Facebook:

UWashington Formula Motorsports
10 Std. ·

FSG Final Results:

Overall: 27th

Design: 4th
Skidpad: 9th
Fuel Efficiency: 13th
Business: 17th
Autocross: 18th
Acceleration: 22nd
Cost: 73rd
Endurance: DQ

Unfortunately our team finished the endurance race but failed to pass the new re-scrutineering procedure. We thank Formula Student Germany e.V. for putting on such an amazing competition, and we look forward to competing in Germany again in the future!)

[Z]

... a trick ... to give the teams ... how they can prevent the same [tyre de-beading] issue in Spain.

Julian,

As noted by others, the gold-standard is bead-locks as used by off-road racers (requires completely new rims), or else a slightly bigger hump on the rim (possibly by re-rolling the rim?), or self-tapping screws through the rim and into the bead (messes up your rims).

My guaranteed-good approach in the past has been [... dramatic drum-roll...] ... GLUE! The rubbery "contact-cement" works well (read instructions, then apply between tyre and outer-rim), as does RTV-silicone (use "acetic-cure" (= vinegar smell) for faster cure than "neutral-cure").

The only tricky bit is removing the tyre from rim. I suggest a big tyre-clamp, a sharp razor-blade, and much patience! :)

Z

[NickFavazzo]

Lay some carbon/fibreglass around the bead, if you can spend the time to do a nice job it works well, as Z said, silicone is pretty good too, makes changing the tyre a paint though

[Kevin Hayward]

Z, Julian (and others)

Another solution for improving the bead on a metallic wheel is to use a few weld beads in a circumferential stitch pattern. A lot easier than re-rolling a purchased shell.

After one particular year of leaking and painful rims at ECU wheel shells are now welded together and beads are built up with a little weld. No leaks, tyre slippage, or even a hint of debeading since. Tyres aren't always easy to install, but a small price to pay.

Kev

[Swiftus]

I have seen the contact cement method used successfully a number of times when the time / materials / skill / preparation aren't available. Removing the tire once it has been cured to the wheel is actually pretty easy. Yank out the valve and pour in the solvent / lacquer thinner of your choice and swish it around the bead. Wait half an hour and pop the tire off in the normal fashion.

[Dunk Mckay]

Sorry to change the subject. But I've been speaking with the guys in my old team about design judging at FSG.

Although, sadly Design Judging wasn't part of their focus this year (long story, but the reason we're talking about it is because I'm convincing them that it should be next year). They don't seem to think that FSG use this document, or follow the same structure for scoring in Design.
http://www.fsaeonline.com/content/FSAE%20Design%20Score%20Sheet%20150pt.pdf

I argued that surely they must be. But thought I'd ask on here, and get it from the horse's mouth.

I think their main argument is that the judges they had weren't broken up the same way as the sheet, but rather covered different technical areas of the car.

They believe they had 2 vehicle dynamics judges, 1 electronics, 1 aero, 1 driver controls & calibration, 2 powertrain, and 2 on chassis.

This isn't a criticism, or a complaint, I wasn't there. But want to reassure them that they have the right information to focus on design for next year. So it would be good to get first hand clarification. Pat, are you around?

[Kevin Hayward]

Am I right in saying at least one team was DQ'd for aero out of bounds by 4mm?

I am wondering why there isn't an up-roar over the penalty and ongoing technical inspections. Is it that the teams have accepted it? Or that they don't mind as much when it is not them? Or when FSG does it, it can't be related to Brexit? Or did FSG somehow deal with it better, maybe benefiting from the events of FSUK?

While the questions maybe a little cheeky I am genuinely curious as to how this was conducted and why there appears to be so little backlash.

Kev

[SennaH]

Julian,

well I see that it looks like there is a link. I don't want to exclude the possibility that the new tire design has affected the likeliness of this incident under the given circumstances.
Basically everything that increases the lateral load on the tire does so. ;)

To any concerned team:
The best tip that I have is basically what I have written before:
- Tubeless tires should be mounted on rims designed for bead retention. Make sure you have a proper hump contour on the outside of the rim (Hump H or at least Flat Hump FH).
- Teams that manufacture their own rims should ensure that they stick to the available standards, guidelines and tolerances.
- If the rim contour doesn't feature a proper hump, get new rims or do something about it, e.g. taking the measures described by the others :)
- Don't run inflation pressures below our recommendations (teams with Conti tires will find it in our documentation, next year they will also find recommended rim contours :) )

Best regards,
Hannes

[NathVanVugt]

Thijs and all,

Australian team members are for sure as well educated, disciplined and passionate as any other team members in the world.

They do not have as much potential sponsors, they not have the manufacturing habits/excellence that we can see in Germany (but it is not as if Australian manufacturing is bad) and the distance to Europe and the US is an issue...
.....but I do not believe that explains the lack of performance in foreign competitions.
I think the main issue is that, in simple words, the professionalism of the best FS teams has been exponential while the Australian teams progression is linear.
The constant weight (if not in fact an increasing weight) of Monash car is an illustration of this low performance slope.
In other words, it seems Australian students do not know what they do not know and I am not sure they do whatever is possible to discover what is missing.
The few Australian teams I know well seem to be having a good team spirit, a good cohesion, they know how to have fun (it is important) but the awareness of the level of needed excellence to be competitive seems to be not well defined and/or not well integrated.
Formula student is about offering the students the opportunity to learn by doing, but in a competitive and connected world it is also about learning quickly.

Claude,
I agree we have very limited sponsorship opportunities in Australia, FSAE-A have been contancted by international sponsors that would like to employ Australian engineers overseas, the Australian automotive/engineering industry here just isn't interested in what we are doing.
Distance makes things a bit harder but no excuse really, with a good host university normally our team excels as we are all in a foreign country and have no friends or family to worry about and our workload increases by 20-30%
But I do disagree with a blanket statement of all Australian teams...
ECU was continually told how high our professionalism was throughout the competition, it was actually specifically mentioned when we won the cost event at FSUK.
Also we have a 4 cylinder car, with aero that weighs 184 kilos, does 3.8 second acceleration times, 5 second dry skidpad and if it was not for an engine failure and we had of completed Acceleration and Skidpad (Assuming the same times as FSAE-A 15') we would have come third overall.

Not to mention we are a team of 20 students who do this while completing 4 units a semester whereas the Dutch and German team's were telling us the university gives them a year off mid degree to complete a year of FS then fall into a advisory role from then on. (Totally hearsay.)
Is this in the spirit of the competition? It's Formula Student but if you are not completing units are you still considered a student?

[Thijs]

Hi Kevin,

I guess you’re addressing me. Although you at least addressed some of my points in our exchange over the DQ's at FSUK, I unfortunately never got a response from Mr. Royce, so I’m a little bit done with the whole subject.

Also, I actually wasn't aware that a team had been disqualified for 4mm oversized wings at FSG, but sure, I’ll bite.

FSG had clearly learned from the situation at FSUK. There were some crucial differences, especially in how they communicated in advance how cases with aero non-rule compliance would be handled.
The following message was communicated during the opening cermony (https://youtu.be/b11eQzpRJ_Y?t=13m12s):


Scrutineers will at no point during normal scrutineering measure the aerodynamics.
‘More responsibility will be put with the teams this year’
‘If a car has a sticker, that means that it is safe, not that it complies with the rules’
‘If your aero pack is too large, we don’t measure it. If we see it, and we have the impression it might be too large, and we measure afterwards, tough shit’
‘We will randomly check [after dynamic events]’

The stated primary goal here was to make scrutineering more efficient in an effort to get more teams through inspection before Friday afternoon.

In addition, it was made clear in the scrutineering briefing what the penalty would be when non-compliance would be found after a specific dynamic event: DQ for that event.

This sends a much clearer signal than stating twice to a team that their aero is rule compliant, but then deciding to go by the third measurement that finds something else, and inventing a penalty measure on the spot.
I still consider the penalty to be harsh. But so is a DQ after being over the power limit for 501ms rather than 499. However, if it has been defined clearly beforehand, like in the power limit rule (which for aero it isn’t in the rules, but which it was at the start of FSG), I won’t complain afterwards.

I would consider the German approach clearer and more pragmatic than the one at FSUK.
Also (crucially) fairer, to the extent that the ‘random’ part which was mentioned is quite important.
First of all, many teams were checked at FSG. (Some barely made it through and benefited from a bit of realism, such as the team that was granted quite a few attempts to show that their ground clearance was rule compliant. The officials were strict, but clearly not eager to hand out DQ’s.)
Teams up and down ‘the ranks’ got DQ’d, and they got their penalties for breaking a variety of rules.
I maintain that that looks very different from 4 out of the top 5 fastest teams being disqualified for the same issue, and no one else (apart from power violations which are checked and caught 100% of the time).

[BenMueller]

Hi all,

I was a Scrutineer at this year's FSG and I can tell you that we as former team members, tried everything to not DQ any team.
We give the team's the chance to show us, that their design is rule compliant and e.g. let them measure their aero packages by theirself if it was critical.

But at some point we have to draw the line and for example a BOTS that can't be actuated by the brake pedal, even when one brake circuit is opened is not rule-compliant at all.

Also we give a fair warning to the team's before Wet Pad - we measured the min. ground clearance of 30mm.
When it was tight we said drive and we will check if it fits afterwards and when not get an DNF or go back to the pit, adjust your suspension and come back.

KR
Ben

[Ahmad Rezq]

BenMueller,
Not all the teams were allowed to show the scrutineers that their design is rule compliant, or as stated from the competition that this year the teams has to appoint one team member who will be responsible for the technical inspection.
for some teams the scurtineering went as the traditional way, two or three scurtineers hold the TIS and do the process

But i have to say, that FSG has one of the best and toughest scurtineering among all the formula student competitions.

[Kevin Hayward]

Thijs,

I wasn't actually directing my question to you (or any particular person), as there were a lot of people upset about what happened at the UK, not just those directly associated with the teams. However thank you for your clear response.

It appears that there is agreement between the comps as to the penalty for non-compliance. I wonder if the clear communication from the organisers of FSG is something that was informed by the situation at FSUK, or if they always intended to do so.

...

So I guess Formula Student (at least UK and Germany) is now a place where technical inspection happens at any time and the penalty for non-compliance is a DQ. As long as this is communicated clearly to the teams and it affects everybody then there aren't too many complaints.

Kev

[Kevin Hayward]

On the issue of Monash:

I think they should be held up as an example of a great team following FSG. They have had a horror campaign in Europe, with a failure at both UK and Austria. The car had a lot of little niggles, which cost a lot of performance, but they pushed through and made sure the car got over the line in Germany.

The team had its best performance during the big wing era which shows how much they know about developing aerodynamic packages. With the change to the rules they have produced one of their most unique cars with a lot of great ideas, although probably not implemented as well as they would have liked. They have always been heavier than other top Australasian teams, and it is an area they need to address.

To put their efforts into perspective they entered the top ten world rankings in 2009, which they stayed through to 2015, being as high as 1st (for a brief moment). Teams like Stuttgart and GFR were in and out during this period.

Yet instead of applauding them as a good example of Australian engineering they are used as an example of how our engineering is somehow failing????

...

On the other hand I see the compliment Claude has made by making the assumption that a country of 24 million people whose primary export is dirt should be doing better on the world stage. His assumption of expecting good Australian engineering is probably founded on the fact that since 1998 only 14 teams have won a major competition that was not their home competition, 3 of which were Australian.

I will admit that it is very difficult to keep up the development pace that we see out of Europe at the moment. There are some well resourced teams with incredibly intelligent and creative students. Nor would I expect that we could match the pace of Chinese team improvements. But lets try and keep a little perspective as to what we should expect from our nation.

Lets keep in mind that since 2008 there has not been a completely US team (GFR having international involvement) win Michigan, and UK teams have never won their own competition. A number of competing nations have not produced a top ranked team.

Instead of trying to use this to denigrate the engineering ability of whole people groups instead see it for what it is, a small number of highly professional teams doing an amazing job, and just about everyone else left in their shadow.

Kev

[Mitchell]

Your post got me interested Kev and so I decided I had to compare countries, even if I felt a little bit Trumpish doing it. I used the data from the top 250 teams on the FS combustion world rankings and calculated the percentage of teams for each country in the top 20. For the sake of extra confusion I made GFR 50/50 US/DE.

67% Austria (ie: 67% of Austrian teams in the top 250 are in the top 20)
33% New Zealand
17% Japan
13% Australia
12% Germany
8% UK
5% USA

Bit more interesting by region:
16% Oceania (ie: 16% of Oceania teams in the top 250 are in the top 20)
12% Asia
9% Europe (If you perform a BREXIT this number pretty much stays the same)
4% America

For a country/region with zero automotive industry that exports dirt we are represented pretty well. Obviously being just combustion data this is thrown a little, but interesting anyway.

[Dunk Mckay]

UK teams have never won their own competition.


I was about to mention this myself, and pick you up on it, but then re-read and saw you'd said "their own competition" not "a competition". As Bath's recent success at FS Czech has now muddied the waters on the statement I'm sure so many UK teams make at the start of a new year: "We could be the first UK team to ever win a competition!"

I say muddied the waters, because Czech is not an official FSAE event, and with only 29 teams in attendance, the competition is a little less fierce. I don't want to downplay Bath's success, I congratulate them, I believe at present they are the best UK team. But with so few of the big teams actually attending the event, and setting faster times that would bump Bath down the leader board, the scores are not really comparable to FSG.

All this to say that the country that can arguable be called the home of motorsport, that has the universities that produce the largest number of graduates that go on to work in Formula 1, is giving a poor showing in FSAE. Some might argue that the it's the university academic culture, and the employment/sponsorship gap. And while that may play some part, I don't believe it's a good enough excuse.
I think too many UK team members see this as mini F1, an opportunity to have some fun before getting a proper job. Like tinkering with an old banger racer on the weekends. If there was an added degree of professionalism, and a willingness to actually learn and apply skills more at home in industry than in your own garage, UK teams would be more consistent and much more successful.

[JulianH]

Michtell,

the flaw in your analysis is, that Germany has like 100-ish teams. Even if they would make up the whole Top20, they only had 20% of their teams in the Top20...

Guys,

why I and (probably Thijs as well) brought up Monash is because they were once the badest guys in town. I mean we feared that winged Monster.
Without Monash and the awesomeness of their guys, our aero package back in 2012 would have been a shit show. I learned so much from Marc Russouw and Scott and all those guys.
Just seeing them not able to compete for a Top5 in AutoX or the out-right win in SkidPad.. that just "feels wrong".

The thing is, at the moment I don't see any non-German-cluster (NL,GER,AT,CH) team that is able to win a competition without the issues of one of those teams. You can argue all day long, but if the likes of Stuttgart, Munich, Karlsruhe, Delft, Zurich or Graz are in town, there is no American (w/o GFR), no British, no Australian, no Japanese team out there that can stop them, which is kind of sad.
Monash was once this "exception". Maybe now it is ECU.

Of course a lot of teams can run in the Top20, but that's just a different ball game.
The best "non-German/austrian" team at FSG Combustion was Hertfordshire in P14. They were 11seconds off-pace in AutoX. (9 seconds if they would have not hit a cone in Run 4)

Maybe in fact we need something to slow these other teams down...

[Mitchell]

Michtell,

the flaw in your analysis is, that Germany has like 100-ish teams. Even if they would make up the whole Top20, they only had 20% of their teams in the Top20...


So that's why I failed statistics!

[Adman]

Maybe in fact we need something to slow these other teams down...

Our uni thinks they are generous in granting us $5000 AUD, which *just* covers our entry to the Aus competition.

Rumors on the grapevine are that Stuttgart run on nearly $600,000 AUD.

I have no idea what their experience of Formula-SAE is. But I imagine they are not 'wasting' their time chasing sponsors, doing fundraisers and raffles and having to purchase items using personal student funds in order to make it through a year.

Frankly what we've been able to do with $5000 of university funding is something I'm proud of, but it would certainly be more competitive if every team was restricted in their funding. Food for thought....

[Dunk Mckay]

The best "non-German/austrian" team at FSG Combustion was Hertfordshire in P14. They were 11seconds off-pace in AutoX. (9 seconds if they would have not hit a cone in Run 4)


Here's a question for everyone then. If the next best car is 9 seconds off the pace. What are technical reasons for that?
Is the engineering just all round not as good?
Is it because they haven't got tons of money to spend on carbon tubs?
Is it more likely to be driver skill, because UK teams don't get their cars built on time?
Do they not know how to set up their car?
Are their wishbones wobbly on German soil?

[JulianH]

Adam,

I'm quite sure Stuttgart is not running on 400.000 EUR... Maybe both Stuttgart teams combined.
Zurich was probably one of the "richest" teams out there when I was part of it, but we were nowhere even close to that number. Not even close to half.

Dunk,

I of course don't have the answer, but some observations from the last years, that could explain some "performance deltas" between a generic "top team" and a "mid tier team":
1) They are happy with things are. Like Adam said, they take the money from the university and stick to the budget. The good team is out there making publicity, pitching to dozens of sponsors and GETS the money or even better, the parts, the machining time, the wind tunnel hours.
Zurich never had A PENNY from ETH. All is from sponsors. We just run around like idiots every year to keep sponsors happy. One of our main sponsors since 2010 wanted to quite 3 times, it is still around.

2) Fast teams care about one thing. Winning. They don't give a damn if the fastest driver does not show up to clean the workshop. Hell, if the guy doing the homepage is the fastest guy out there, I put him in the car.
I saw a lot of people talking that they put the "most hard working people" in the car. That's not the way to go.

3) Having the car finished early is a good thing, yes. But I think our friends from Delft had Shakedowns in the week of the first competition and still were at the top...

4) Building concepts that are not made to win. Sorry but if you turn up with a 250kg 1cylinder car, you are not going to win. Period.
When I was doing Design Judging I had at least 70% of the teams which goal was NOT winning. But like "ohhh we want to finish Endurance". Come on, this is a prerequist, not a goal.

5) People are too proud to copy. I know it is an Engineering competition and this is probably not the way to go to be super good in Engineering Design. But copying a successful concept from the last season gives you a rather good starting point for the future and the next generations can pick up on that.

6) Knowledge transfer. If I remember correctly some teams start absolutely from scratch EVERY year. Of course there is no trajectory...

7) I managed the AMZ Facebook Account for a couple of years and as team leader I also got the mails "to the team". What people are asking there is just ridiculous. Some just want a turn-key answer for their upright or motor or aero package.
Someone asked me once to run a CFD simulation for him. Some teams don't take the whole thing too serious. Which is fine, but that does not bring you to the top.

8) People like to have FSAE on their resume but still want good grades because then you are the perfect candidate for the automotive industry. This is tough for the most of us. So they cannot put too much effort in it. Reduced effort normally means reduced performance.

9) Rigor in team structure. Some teams are more tough on working hours vs. fun hours..

10) I think quoting yourself "the best team from XY" (I even saw IMechE quoting the Xth placed British car "The winner"...) does not really help.. You are the best in the competition or not.

11) I think some people just "elevate" the whole team to another level. You need those to start a streak of success. We had 2-3 "old guys" that shaped the team in the crucial 2nd-4th season of the team. They started a lot of good initiatives and still are the grumpy old guys during team meetings and everyone is afraid to pitch their designs to them... they do really help A LOT.


There are potentially a million more tiny reasons that apply to some but not all teams.

By the way, our budget in 2009 was really small as we lost a lot of support in our third year. We had a team of 6-8 people and build a sub 200kg 4cyl 13inch combustion car that ran Accel sub 4s and was 3rd in FSUK.
That was 7 years ago and I am sure that this thing still would outperform a lof of "new" cars on fresh rubber.

[Kevin Hayward]

Julien,

I think you have hit the nail on the head (Post before the last one). Currently the top group of teams are the likes of Stuttgart, Munich, Karlsruhe, Delft, Zurich, Graz and GFR. Outside of that group the level drops of very quickly regardless of nation of origin. Previously we have had teams like RIT, Georgia Tech, UTA and Cornell. After that Woolongong, RMIT, UWA. Good teams, just like in most sports, tend to cluster as the high performance of locals is often more motivating than those far away. It is one reason why we see siblings competing at high level sport together. They just push each other to higher achievements.

At the moment the "German" cluster is on top. These teams have a good understanding of the car and team required to win the competition in the current state. They should be held up as the current gold standard and a target should be painted on their backs. But not all German teams are at this level, nor should we expect it. Furthermore it has only been like this for the last 5-6 years. Lets discuss again when we see what the next 10 years of formula bring. Once competitive teams like UWA have disappeared as the Universities pulled support. Others are successful while a certain group of people (drivers/designers/managers) are around before culture is lost. Even once almost unbeatable teams like Cornell now linger well down the world rankings.

Consider the poem "Ozymandias" by Percy Bysshe Shelley with the words on the pedestal of the fallen statue:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

...

Personally I am proud of what is happening to the Australian competition at the moment. Things have got a lot closer since Claude last attended an Oz comp, with a number of teams improving dramatically. It is still not at the top level, but teams like Auckland and Canterbury with an EV system would be scary. Auckland has been building very light cars for quite a while and Canterbury's car (after a very short life of the team) has amazing dynamic behaviour. There has been a big improvement in attitude in just the last few years, with teams once happy to finish in 5th place in the Oz comp now trying to take a win. There was a vacuum formed by the massive drop in performance by UWA, RMIT, and Woolongong from 2008/2009 onwards. Monash have done amazingly during that period, but for most of that time were the only top level team of the whole comp. That looks almost certain to end very soon if not this year.

However, I find this whole line of thinking nationalistic crap. The reason we see so many German's winning is not because Germany is a much better country for engineering, or its people are superhuman logical brains without a need for emotion. It is because Stuttgart, Munich etc are amazing teams who have got on top of their competitors. They don't win because they are German, they win because of hard work, good organisation, creativity, good competition, and decent resources. I hope we see Australian teams in the same position in the future, but we could see the next set of great teams from China, the UK, Japan, US, Italy or just about any country capable of producing decent education outcomes and industry backing.

Kev

[Thijs]

I was going to make the same point as Julian about those statistics, with the added example of Austria and the Netherlands having 100% of their teams in the top 20 in the most recent FSE list, and in the new rankings (with Vienna having switched to FSE a few years ago), so will Austria in the FSC list (probably).
No idea what that's supposed to indicate though, wildly differing sample sizes per country just screw up the analysis.

Also, I definitely didn't mean to bash Monash or anything. I was just trying to put things in context relative to their previous performances, which were impressive.
For what it's worth, I had a nice talk with a couple of the Monash guys at FSG, and thought it was nice that they've been working on a UWA-style suspension. It's a cool engineering project for sure.



Rumors on the grapevine are that Stuttgart run on nearly $600,000 AUD.

I have to be blunt. This sounds like something teams say to lull themselves to sleep, arguing that they really tried everything but they just can't compete with those rich guys.
This often enough from teams that struggle to finish all dynamics, as if you'd need a couple of hundreds of thousands of euros/dollars to build a car that can do that.

I stumbled upon an article (http://www.theexeterdaily.co.uk/news/local-news-blogs/exeters-soul-new-machine-formula-student-2015) last year that contained this gem:


Last year’s winning Dutch team from Delft Technical University, who won in 2014 with their €1M electrical car, were also competing this year – complete with a trailer workshop.
Many German and Swiss entries exceeded project costs of €500k, fully supported by healthy investments from their Universities.

Here's a newspaper that presents as fact the idea that Delft spends the equivalent of 1,500,000 AUD on their car. It then implies that the team gets this money from their university.
Although we don't want to be too secretive about it, we've agreed in Delft to not fully disclose the yearly budget. However, maybe we (and other 'rich' teams) should, just to battle these rumors, as I don't think it's healthy for the competition.
I can comfortably say though, that the budget is absolutely nowhere near €500k, let alone €1M. I can't speak for any of the Stuttgart teams of course, but I imagine that goes for them too.

Think about it, what would any FS team even spend that kind of money on? Not on the trailer workshop: all that stuff (truck, trailer, machines) is borrowed from sponsors and university.
Not on the car either. You certainly don't need that kind of money to build a winning FSAE car.
Do you think a public university would spend such amounts on something that benefits less than 100 students a year?

By far the largest chunk of the money in Delft comes from companies. The university's support is very valuable, but mostly takes the form of providing the team with space to design and build their car.
That being said, I realize that some teams may benefit from being one of the few in their quite rich country (Zürich, Delft) and/or being stationed near an automotive powerhouse (teams like Stuttgart), and that they'll certainly have more money than most.
I really respect teams that manage to build a driving car with a few thousands of dollars, or a competitive one with a budget in the low tens of thousands. Unfortunately I'm not sure that's currently possible in FS Electric.


To address Nathan's point from earlier:
In Delft we have a pretty big team of about 70 team members, the vast majority BSc students. Of those, about 50-55 are completely new to the team each year. Roughly 60 design and build the car part time, in the evenings and the weekends.
Managing such a big group takes a lot of overhead, so there's about a 10 people group (some of them with previous experience on the team, others without) that 'get a year off' (they still have to pay tuition, but it's not that expensive in the Netherlands). They don't get any credit for it either though, it's just that you don't get kicked out of school for not taking any exams for 12 months.
I would argue that yes, they definitely are students, in the sense that they certainly aren't professionals either, and none of them have finished their degrees.
I would argue that the strength of the Delft team does not lie in this team structure. In fact I think that with 20 full time guys it would be much easier to build a competitive car.
Delft's strength (and no doubt the strength of other successful teams), is that alumni stick around and stay involved. We (the alumni) don't want to make design choices. Rather, we aim to hand the (often quite inexperienced) teams the tools to find the answers for themselves.
We encourage them to, at least in the conceptual phase, start from scratch. Later on, we'll give feedback on the designs they've come up with, so the team won't make mistakes we've seen before. Many of the involved alumni still are students themselves btw.
For what it's worth, we've never had a faculty adviser in the classical sense. So for things like setting out a multi-year course, the team has always had to depend on alumni that had more of an overview of where the team and the competition was than did one-year team members.

Is this in the spirit of Formula Student? I would say absolutely. Invariably, students that have been part of the team indicate that their year of Formula Student has been the most educational experience of their college education.
This is especially true for members in full time positions, who for the first time in their lives have had to take on a rather comprehensive managing role.
Is this a level playing field? Probably not. But that is the case anyway, for many different reasons.

One of the goals for the Delft team (as envisioned by alumni and the university) is to provide an educational experience as valuable as possible for as many people as possible.
Something that can be both a useful tool for that as well as a possible outcome from that, is the process of building a fast or even winning car.
Leveling the playing field in the FSAE competition ranks relatively low on our list to be honest.

[JasperC]

Rumors on the grapevine are that Stuttgart run on nearly $600,000 AUD.

And do you believe those rumours? Surely not?

8-10 years ago TU Graz won everything and their cars looked like jewels "because Red Bull sponsored them for a million euros" (bollocks, of course).
A year ago there was an article on a UK website spreading the same rumor, about Delft this time.

It's all bs. I don't have access to Stuttgart's budget. I can however tell you that we were FSG combustion champions in 2010 on a budget closer to one tenth of what your rumors say about Stuttgart. We had to buy a second hand dirtbike because it was the only way to get our hands on an engine. I have no reason to believe that other top teams were running shockingly higher budgets. Things may have changed for electric teams (more expensive cars and easier fund-raising) but the popular gossips are, as always, not realistic - especially for combustion teams. Actually I don't even know what on earth you would do with 400.000 euros for 1 combustion car!

It's not about the money. There is one resource in Formula Student which is more important than all others: time. In that respect I do think Delft and some of the German teams have an advantage compared to the others. Those universities treat their FS teams as flag bearers and happily support a limited number of students to delay their studies to take charge of such a project. The university rightly sees this as a benefit to themselves in the end.

It hasn't always been that way. The Delft team started as a student initiative that was able to convince uni to give them more support as the years went by. Maybe a different academic culture makes this difficult in other countries, but my advice would be to try year in year out to show your uni that what you are doing is benefiting them, by creating better engineers, getting closer ties with industry and helping recruit new freshmen. Your goal should not primarily be to squeeze more money out of uni, but for them to support you in spending a lot of time on this project.

[Adman]

Ooops, what have I done! :(

Rereading my post, it sounds more like a whinge which is certainly not how I intended it. Funding certainly doesn't build you a racecar entirely, but a cushion to sit on is nice!

I agree with you Thijs when you say some teams would treat it as an excuse as to why they performed badly. If anything when our team hears these things we use them as motivation - like I said, what we can do on a very limited budget gives us confidence that we are at least making the best of our limited situation.

Julian nails pretty much all points on the head when it comes to those top team advantages, and there's no way to limit those. If you're making the effort to nail those key points then you definitely deserve to win!

[Thijs]

Adam,

I didn't think your post was particularly whiny :)

It's just that I've heard similar rumors so many times over the years and it always annoys me.


because it diminishes the accomplishments of the teams that supposedly get those amounts of money, when in fact they have to work very hard to convince sponsors, and it's still only a fraction of the amount.
(much more importantly) because it might convince some others that they can't win anyway, and yet others to therefore not even (really) try


cheers!

[Z]

Yes, Julian has certainly hit the nail on its head.


... some observations from the last years, that could explain some "performance deltas" between a generic "top team" and a "mid tier team"...
...
Fast teams care about one thing. WINNING!!! (My added emphasis.)

The other factors mentioned by Julian also make a difference, but they are a long way behind the one above. I might put "knowledge transfer" in second place. Having "much money" is much, much further back, possibly even a hindrance.

(So, Adam, stop whinging, and sit on a milk-crate! :))
~o0o~

In the past I have suggested to students who want to improve their Team's performance that they put this sign on their workshop wall.

"Three Rules for Winning this Competition.
=================================
Rule 1. Winning Teams are happy Teams.
Rule 2. Any Team-Member whose decisions or actions cause the Team to NOT win, will have their rotting carcass nailed to this wall ... as positive encouragement to future Team-Members.
Rule 3. BE HAPPY!!! (See Rule 1.)"

Below the sign I would put a lump-hammer, and a big box of nine-inch nails.

(So, Adam, methinks the UTAS Team-Member (or Members?) responsible for the switch to your current "unwinnable" concept should be on that wall now. As "...positive encouragement...", of course! :))

Z

[NathVanVugt]

To address Nathan's point from earlier:
In Delft we have a pretty big team of about 70 team members, the vast majority BSc students. Of those, about 50-55 are completely new to the team each year. Roughly 60 design and build the car part time, in the evenings and the weekends.
Managing such a big group takes a lot of overhead, so there's about a 10 people group (some of them with previous experience on the team, others without) that 'get a year off' (they still have to pay tuition, but it's not that expensive in the Netherlands). They don't get any credit for it either though, it's just that you don't get kicked out of school for not taking any exams for 12 months.
I would argue that yes, they definitely are students, in the sense that they certainly aren't professionals either, and none of them have finished their degrees.
I would argue that the strength of the Delft team does not lie in this team structure. In fact I think that with 20 full time guys it would be much easier to build a competitive car.
Delft's strength (and no doubt the strength of other successful teams), is that alumni stick around and stay involved. We (the alumni) don't want to make design choices. Rather, we aim to hand the (often quite inexperienced) teams the tools to find the answers for themselves.
We encourage them to, at least in the conceptual phase, start from scratch. Later on, we'll give feedback on the designs they've come up with, so the team won't make mistakes we've seen before. Many of the involved alumni still are students themselves btw.
For what it's worth, we've never had a faculty adviser in the classical sense. So for things like setting out a multi-year course, the team has always had to depend on alumni that had more of an overview of where the team and the competition was than did one-year team members.

Is this in the spirit of Formula Student? I would say absolutely. Invariably, students that have been part of the team indicate that their year of Formula Student has been the most educational experience of their college education.
This is especially true for members in full time positions, who for the first time in their lives have had to take on a rather comprehensive managing role.
Is this a level playing field? Probably not. But that is the case anyway, for many different reasons.

Thijs, managing 20 or so people is hard enough, I could not imagine 50,60,70+ Fair enough, I guess it is in the spirit of FS and different teams do things differently whether that is a year off or 4/5 years of FS.
We normally have members join in 1st or 2nd year, from here they will complete a 3 year Motorsport degree with involvement in the team but only about 4 units out of 24 counting towards the team, most members then go on to finish another 1.5 years (or more) to also get a Bachelor's degree in Mech Eng which means we normally have team members actively in the team for up to 5 years even 6 in some cases.
So although such team have a year off its probably not such an advantage over some other teams. This style of keeping members for such long periods of time has allowed us to do projects like the custom engine and that.

[Dunk Mckay]

Julian, we've talked before about budgets. And it's an interesting thing. My old team's budget is significantly smaller than yous, but almost all of it comes from the university directly. With, for the most part, only small discounts from supplier/sponsors.

What Brunel gets it's a budget for the car which usually goes a bit over, but no one complains much. There is a small workshop budget each month, that covers a few projects, but mainly the FS teams tooling needs. All other costs, such as travel, testing, accommodation and entry fees, are assumed as covered. No one in the team every really counts it, it just gets paid. It's an ideal situation really.
The only difference a bigger budget would make, would that the team would be forced to use more advanced manufacturing techniques, that perhaps they don't have the skills for. I think they'd just send off for more machined parts, rather than making them in house. And perhaps that's the right thing to do, time is arguably more important than a fancy design, at Brunel at least.

So I don't think budget is the be all and end all. A big budget will only help you if you truly know how to make good use of it. Most teams...don't.



Delft's strength (and no doubt the strength of other successful teams), is that alumni stick around and stay involved. We (the alumni) don't want to make design choices. Rather, we aim to hand the (often quite inexperienced) teams the tools to find the answers for themselves.
We encourage them to, at least in the conceptual phase, start from scratch. Later on, we'll give feedback on the designs they've come up with, so the team won't make mistakes we've seen before. Many of the involved alumni still are students themselves btw.
For what it's worth, we've never had a faculty adviser in the classical sense. So for things like setting out a multi-year course, the team has always had to depend on alumni that had more of an overview of where the team and the competition was than did one-year team members.

Is this in the spirit of Formula Student? I would say absolutely. Invariably, students that have been part of the team indicate that their year of Formula Student has been the most educational experience of their college education.
This is especially true for members in full time positions, who for the first time in their lives have had to take on a rather comprehensive managing role.
Is this a level playing field? Probably not. But that is the case anyway, for many different reasons.

I'm glad to hear you say this. A few on Brunel's alumni, myself including, are tired of the teams mediocre or inconsistent performance, and lack of long term plans (we started one 4 years ago only for it to be thrown out after only 2 relatively good years of progress).
So we have decided we're going to do a lot more this year to help the new team, but had been a little conflicted on whether or not this would be, as you put it, "in the spirit of Formula Student". So that is encouraging.

[Scott Monash]

Very interesting thread, and thanks everyone for both the kind words and constructive feedback.
The Monash guys are understandably a little disappointed with the recent campaign.
As I was not with the team for both the Austrian and German comps, and given they are still filtering back into the country now, I will wait to catch up with them and debrief properly before adding my 2c.
I am sure some of our seniors will chime in as well.
More soon, cheers

[JulianH]

Dunk,

I know there is always been a lot of discssion about "inhouse" parts. There are basically two schools of thought.
One hand says "everything should be manufactured inhouse so that people "learn" it" and other say "do as it is best for you".

I'm a strong supporter of the later.

I think it is awesome that people can design parts and for us it was great to have external partners to support us in the manufacturing process. The necessary skills of "knowing how parts are made" and "design parts that actually can get manufactured" is given also in that process.
The discussions with the manufacturing partners about that were great and really helpful.

Yes you can design a car without using a 5-axis CNC machine, but where is the fun in that?

I think the fewest of the few Engineering graduates will ever need to use a lathe or a mill by hand in their later professional life. Why forcing them to spend a lot of time on this?

The most of Zurich's parts are manufactured by the apprenticeship department of a large Airline maintenance company. Those young kids are always so happy to make those "difficult but real-life" parts and often use an upright or a complicated cooling plate as their final exam piece. That was always awesome.
And I'm quite sure that all teams should be able to find eager partners like that...

[jose_90]

Sorry to change the subject. But I've been speaking with the guys in my old team about design judging at FSG.

Although, sadly Design Judging wasn't part of their focus this year (long story, but the reason we're talking about it is because I'm convincing them that it should be next year). They don't seem to think that FSG use this document, or follow the same structure for scoring in Design.
http://www.fsaeonline.com/content/FSAE%20Design%20Score%20Sheet%20150pt.pdf

I argued that surely they must be. But thought I'd ask on here, and get it from the horse's mouth.

I think their main argument is that the judges they had weren't broken up the same way as the sheet, but rather covered different technical areas of the car.

They believe they had 2 vehicle dynamics judges, 1 electronics, 1 aero, 1 driver controls & calibration, 2 powertrain, and 2 on chassis.

This isn't a criticism, or a complaint, I wasn't there. But want to reassure them that they have the right information to focus on design for next year. So it would be good to get first hand clarification. Pat, are you around?

Hello,
No, that was not the document that they used. In the FSG web, every team can access their own "Engineering Design Review", and in there they can see the document that judges use, with comments handwritten by the judges.

I don't really like this document, and in my opinion, the standard one in the quoted post is MUCH better.

These are the first two pages, there are four more:
1031
1032

In my opinion the document quoted in the above post is much clearer than this one. In many of the boxes, I sincerely don't know what the judges are looking for. For example, the first page is about "Overall vehicle concept", and there are two boxes for "Tool and process knowledge". I would think this is about the tools you have used to define your vehicle concept (although in my opinion that's not particularly important, as long as you have reached clear coherent objectives, I don't care if you used some software or simply a whiteboard). However, in my old team's case, the judge wrote there something about the chassis.

I would be interested to know other people's opinions on this matter, as well as any corrections of course.

Thanks

[NickFavazzo]

Whilst Adams numbers may be out, I think there is definitely a point at which you have sufficient monetary support to no longer worry about sourcing and funding aspects of the project and them focus on the engineering time management. When you sit at 5k (au) support, you work hard to make that number go as far as possible, not only that, in-kind (product) can somtimes be easy to get but that's usually a one off product. One of the better in-kind supports I can think off would be material or hardware (we used to get free aluminium, except 7000 series) and early in UWA's history, we got free old (out of date) carbon from boeing(?).

Whilst 600k is extreme, once you step up from 5k to say 50k, it's a completely different game, seeing the change at UWA (in reverse) has given me a new perspective and much respect for teams that operate successfully on such a tight budget.

tldr: Once you have enough money to no longer worry about how you will get a new set of belts because yours just lapsed, you can focus on the next issue.

[Adman]

Whilst Adams numbers may be out, I think there is definitely a point at which you have sufficient monetary support to no longer worry about sourcing and funding aspects of the project and them focus on the engineering time management. When you sit at 5k (au) support, you work hard to make that number go as far as possible, not only that, in-kind (product) can somtimes be easy to get but that's usually a one off product. One of the better in-kind supports I can think off would be material or hardware (we used to get free aluminium, except 7000 series) and early in UWA's history, we got free old (out of date) carbon from boeing(?).

Whilst 600k is extreme, once you step up from 5k to say 50k, it's a completely different game, seeing the change at UWA (in reverse) has given me a new perspective and much respect for teams that operate successfully on such a tight budget.

tldr: Once you have enough money to no longer worry about how you will get a new set of belts because yours just lapsed, you can focus on the next issue.

This was more my point. Having the cushion to replace any broken parts or mistakes, or avoid the sometimes extremely tedious process of obtaining a sponsored component that may only be $200 - $1000 and just buy it instead.

[Claude Rouelle]

Just want to share a larger perspective here: The main goal of Formula Student is to offer the possibility for students to learn by doing.
Making a focus on winning, or be the most competitive as you can is good because the progresses we make in the world is often the result of competition.
FS do help students prepare to get readier for this competitive world.
But at the end winning is not essential.
I often meet several years after the competitions, on race track, seminar, congress, at car or car components (tire for example) manufacturing or testing facilities, race teams, or even when visiting professional places that has nothing to do with cars (Blue Origin or SpaceX for example) ex FS guys who do an absolutely fantastic career (and have fun at their work).
Many of them come from FS teams that where B or C or even lower level teams.
Little experience, budget, workshop machining capabilities, etc... doesn't mean low experience and education. In fact working in difficult conditions could develop even better skills.

Two important things I learnt in mt career, especially working with good managers or even working side by side with race car mental trainer:

1. You cannot have any influence of what the others are doing: the budget, their wind tunnel performance, their chief engineers skills, the power of their engines etc...
No more that there are a few things that you did not decide in your life: you did not choose your parents, your name, your citizenship.
But you can and should focus on things you can change: you can't change this year budget but you can increase next year's one, you can better use a software, you can positively influence a manufacturing process.
So focus on things that are in your control and if possible increase the numbers of things that can be in your control.
Speaking about other teams budget, number of students, sponsors, etc.. can make you lose focus on the potential you have to develop your own skills and means. And you could end up sounding like whiners.

2. Strategy by objective (kind of "who have to win", "you must do acceleration under 4.0", etc) do not work.
Why? If you win you did nothing special; you just reached the objective that you assigned to yourself. But if you missed the objective then you failed. As there will only be one winner, are the other teams failures?
I have seen racing drivers blaming themselves for losing a race because of a tire puncture they were not responsible for.
I have seen drivers who, in the same circumstances, said that "they did the best they could" and they will not incriminate themselves for something that was not under their control

Too long to elaborate on this topic so I will simply say this: strategy by challenges works better than strategy by objectives

Two books I advise on this topic
- Performance Thinking (Jacques Dallaire) https://www.amazon.com/Performance-Thinking-Mental-Skills-Competitive-ebook/dp/B008VY2ZDC#nav-
- The Core (Aki Hintsa) http://www.hintsa.com/the-core/

[Bemo]

So I guess Formula Student (at least UK and Germany) is now a place where technical inspection happens at any time and the penalty for non-compliance is a DQ. As long as this is communicated clearly to the teams and it affects everybody then there aren't too many complaints.

Kev

This has always been the case. In the past teams weren't pushing it that hard to the limits. But there were always since I'm involved reinspections and there have always been DQ's. I don't get your point. Are you suggesting the organisers should scrutineer the cars and then there should be no more checks? I guess after one year not a single team would enter endurance with a working BOTS and if your wings would be rules compliant you would be the idiot of the day. I don't blame any team which was recently DQ'ed this year of cheating on purpose, but if you officially don't check anything there will be cheating...

[Kevin Hayward]

This has always been the case. In the past teams weren't pushing it that hard to the limits. But there were always since I'm involved reinspections and there have always been DQ's. I don't get your point. Are you suggesting the organisers should scrutineer the cars and then there should be no more checks? I guess after one year not a single team would enter endurance with a working BOTS and if your wings would be rules compliant you would be the idiot of the day. I don't blame any team which was recently DQ'ed this year of cheating on purpose, but if you officially don't check anything there will be cheating...

Bemo,

I agree with the rationale and practice of post scrutineering inspection. My post was with respect to the fact that when it was done in the UK there was a large outcry over the resultant DQs. Teams were DQ'd in Germany for similar issues and there is almost complete silence. It appears that FSG had more post scrutineering inspection. Any question involved was merely wondering whether teams had noticed this and had accepted it as the norm. Including the level of scrutiny placed on aero dimensions.

We had people arguing the following points (amongst others):

a) Post scrutineering inspection was against the spirit of the competition as it assumes cheating
b) Post endurance event scrutineering of the event only mentions engine which disallows inspecting the aerodynamic dimensions
c) A penalty of DQ is not justified in the rules
d) If a penalty is to be applied a DQ is too harsh a penalty for a minor infraction
e) Aero dimensions a few mm out of spec do not provide a performance advantage and should not be DQ'd (points penalty at most)

There was a lot of heated discussion, including the accusation of bias of the UK scrutineers against European and/or electric teams. Some posters implied that their teams would consider not returning to the UK in protest of this.

In Germany there was at least one foreign team that had a post endurance inspection, during which an Aero dimension was out by a small margin, and as a result they were DQ'd from endurance.

There was little to no outcry over this.

I was wondering whether by the lack of protest that teams had now accepted the following as standard practice:

a) Post scrutineering is completely allowed within the rules at any time
b) Small deviations of aero dimensions constitute a failure to meet technical regulations
c) An acceptable penalty for failing to meet technical regulations is a DQ

Kind Regards,

Kev

[Bemo]

a) Post scrutineering inspection was against the spirit of the competition as it assumes cheating
b) Post endurance event scrutineering of the event only mentions engine which disallows inspecting the aerodynamic dimensions
c) A penalty of DQ is not justified in the rules
d) If a penalty is to be applied a DQ is too harsh a penalty for a minor infraction
e) Aero dimensions a few mm out of spec do not provide a performance advantage and should not be DQ'd (points penalty at most)

a) If there would be no post scrutineering at all there would be a huge discussion wether some teams are cheating or not.
b) A3.7
Right to Impound
SAE and other competition organizing bodies reserve the right to impound any onsite registered
vehicles at any time during a competition for inspection and examination by the organizers,
officials and technical inspectors.
The rules couldn't be clearer on that.
c) Actually the rules don't state what has to happen if any non-compliances are discovered. Therefore I'd interpret the rules (and that's how we handled it at FS Austria) it is up to the organisers do decide what penalty is appropriate for the specific case. Wether a DQ for a 4mm to wide wing is appropriate or not is a different topic.
d) That's an issue you can actually argue about.
e) same point as d)

The big difference in my opinion is that FSG made a clear announcement how they will handle the topic of reinspections and made clear they will DQ teams in case non-compliances are found. So teams knew what they have to deal with and if they fuck it up they have to live with the consequences.
As long as the process is transparent and all teams are treated equally, it is not that important how you do reinspections and which penalties you apply as everyone can take measures to avoid any penalty.

Although it is ok to discuss this topic, I have to say that in my personal opinion a lot of it during the last weeks was somewhere between childish and stupid. Formula Student is not supposed to be some fun event to give children the possibility to play with racecars. It is an educational event for adults, whom you can expect to prepare themselves properly and who have to live with the consequences if they fuck it up.
Long story short. As long as there is a process which is transparent and the same for everyone there is no need for complaining. And as you could see at FSG, in this case no one bothers that much, if someone is indeed DQ'ed.

[Hughes66]

Hey I just a couple of points in regards to MMS's results this year.

Our poor performance in Europe has been a direct result of ineffective testing and car development. This has meant that we have not been able to get the most out of the concept, and has limited our driver training.

Poor time estimation for manufacturing, as well as car preparation have been the leading causes of this. We underestimated the time and manpower required to manufacture many systems which resulted in rushed execution. The same can be said of many repair solutions for parts that failed during testing. In hindsight these rushed solutions caused further issues ultimately resulting in limited effective driving time.

The current team as a whole is younger and less experienced than it has been in the past, and we have made avoidable mistakes. This has highlighted a significant issue with our methods for knowledge transfer to new members and record keeping.
We are currently investigating and addressing the management errors that have led to the issues above so that we can avoid the same mistakes in the future.

The Australasia competition is now more competitive than it has ever been, with ECU producing an incredibly light car with a very sophisticated engine that would have likely placed first at Auscomp in 2015 if not for a minor issue in endurance. Both Uni of Canterbury and Uni of Aukland produced cars of world class standard last year. Uni of Queensland and Uni of Melbourne have gained performance in leaps and bounds year on year, with Melbourne winning endurance at FSAE-A last year.
Our performance this year is not a reflection of the best of the Australasia comp, and I admit that we have not been great ambassadors for the AU/NZ teams.

Sam Hughes

MMS Chief Engineer

[Z]

Sam,

Thanks for the honest appraisal of Monash's recent efforts.
~o0o~

Two things other teams can take from Sam's post.

1. If a well resourced and successful team like Monash (with many hands + sufficient cash) can struggle to get their car finished on time, then think about how difficult it will be for your team.

2. With the young and inexperienced Monash members having now received their kick up the pants, methinks their next car will be ready well before time. All the other teams that Sam mentioned (ECU/Cant/Auk/UQ/Mel/+++) best get down to the workshop NOW! :)

Z

[JulianH]

Thanks for the feedback, Sam!
I'm sure you guys will bounce back and will be much stronger the next time you are in Europe. Maybe even with the E-Car :)

Quick question:
How many weeks/months did you have between the 2015 FSAE-A competition and shipping the car to Europe?
It looked like the car was performing "fine" in Australia. Surely not full potential but at a higher level compared to Europe. Couldn't you use this testing time for "updates"?

The car should be now nearly one year old, so I don't know how much more testing you usually do. Or was the tight schedule to the Australian competition the reason for some "shortcuts" that hurt you in the long run?

How is the car for the 2016 competition coming along? Are you doing a "M15 Evo" or what are the plans for this? ECU seems to step out of the Australian competitions after participating in Europe, so I hope you guys can manage that!

Good luck!
Julian

[Hughes66]

Julian, We shipped at the start of April, which gave us 4 months following the Australasia comp. This time was used for developing improvements for Europe and designing the 2016 Aus comp car, training new drivers and testing the car. Although we made strong improvement, we did not iron out all the bugs in that time.
We battled with many significant issues throughout the 2015 competition and we were fortunate to pull together for each event.

We will be competing at FSAE-A this year with a car that is an evolution of M15. It is a shame that we won't be able to compete against ECU again this year, but I can appreciate their reasoning, and I hope to see them back next year.

Cheers

Sam

[NathVanVugt]

In contrast ECU is lucky enough to be able to fly to car over, this is enforced by the university so we do not miss out on several months of testing which we are more than happy with.
The car left one week before the team and was able to be picked up as we landed in London.

We are considering changing our plans around a bit, we are currently working through our project plan and seeing if its possible to return to the FSUK and possibly FSG next year.
The original plan was to have an 18 months design and build cycle but we believe me might be able to do it in 12 months and return to Europe next year!

The hard part for us is the huge conceptual change we are making for this next car, similar to our 2012 - 2014 change we made, so we need enough time to allow our small team enough time to design and manufacture.

It would have been great if a few of us could have attended FSG this year to see the in's and out's of the competition but it didn't end up happening, so I am sure a few teams will be getting emails from us in the near future.