FSAE World Ranking: Who is Number 1 worldwide? [Archive]

Bemo

01-10-2009, 09:18 AM

Here are a few thoughts from me. In my opinion you can't critisize that it pulls you down, if you don't finish some events, although you have a fast car. That's motorsport. Of course a lot of accidents are just bad luck (for example if a chain brakes). But very often there are also reasons for failures, for example a lack of testing time, because a car was finished to late.
And also the number of the events is ok I think. If you just participate in the three European events, you have six events in two years. There are a lot of teams who do that.
At the beginning of this threat someone asked for points per dollars spent. That's nonsense, because first of all it is impossible to get to know that. And there are a lot of cars, which are much more expensive than ours I think. If you take a look at it, you won't see that much of fancy expensive features, most of it is pretty much standard.
In my opinion this ranking is a great thing (not only because we are first). The only thing I dislike is that the last event counts extremely much compared to older ones. RMIT got from 1 to 22 at one single competition. It was a very bad competition for them in Australia but they schould have stayed in the top10 I think. On the other hand the factor for competitivness of the event is 0.85 in the worst case. That means that the first place of RMIT in 2007 at FS UK doesn't count very much, but a first in Japan or Italy very much, if you haven't done any competitions since then.

Wesley

01-10-2009, 04:21 PM

I never said it'd be easy to get the budget information. I just would like to see it. We have a low budget comparatively, and we do okay. It would give you more information. Cost of the car is only part of the budget - the rest affects what kind of research you can do.

I don't expect it to affect the rankings, I just want to see how much money the top teams operate on.

RacingManiac

01-10-2009, 04:26 PM

One thing I think one should do is not just take a look at the top 10 Frank posted. The actual list is a 425 page PDF file of ALL the schools competed in ALL the events since 1991, and how they are ranked based on their formula after every single one of the events. The formula puts emphasis on how much competition a school competes, and how recent their latest event was. There was a saying I believe that you are only as good as your last race, and this system sorta puts a premium on that. But then they also tried to balance that out by assigning a competitiveness scale of each event, so a team who's first in an event with 20 cars is not ranked the same as a team who's first compare with 120 cars. But I think its a testiment to the competitiveness world wide that all the events is at a very high standard now. As such all the events will have their results counted well in the system. And as such the more you race the better you do on this list. Which is why Stuttgart is kicking everyone's butt since they've pretty much went on a tear since 2007 and they've raced in most of the events in the last 2 years.

I think this kinda goes back to that discussion some had here at the forum that should team compete in more events. Back in the day there was only FSAE Michigan, then there were Australasia and UK, now many others are popping up. Consider most big European schools goes to at the minimum all the events in Europe(UK, Germany, Italy), in this ranking they get more chances to score, and with more recent results. Now in NA we have 3 events now as well, although to be fair it's hard to be registered for all 3 since we have entrant caps and you have preferance into which one you are entered first. Granted if you can't be in all the NA events going abroad will be more expensive, but then that might give the business people more to do. I know in our case we have to raise a certain amount every year just so we can race in UK(or now, Germany).

Its nice to see our school is featured well on this list, as it sorta validates our practice of getting a car done early, and test often, so that by competition it is reliable, and drivers are well practiced for what they do. Certainly makes all the sleepless nights in the shop and early mornings for testing seem to be worth something. I am sure VinceL agrees with me on that one...

Pete Marsh

01-11-2009, 05:12 PM

It looks like a fantastic system to me, and absolutly should include all your events, good or bad. You make your own luck at events. Ever heard of the 6 P's?
Prior Preperation Prevents Piss Poor Performance

Its a shame for RMIT this wasn't about when they were dominating the world, but I'm sure the new fuel economy rules will make some big changes to the rankings by this time next year!

pete

Maverik

01-11-2009, 06:46 PM

Go Gators, I'll take 8th on the world list considering we never get to race outside of Michigan :-(

Thrainer

01-12-2009, 06:02 AM

Originally posted by Wesley:
... We have a low budget comparatively, and we do okay. ...

First, if you know how you compare, you must have some of the information you're looking for http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif
Second, how does having a low budget make you a better team? It's not a constant! It's your job to get enough money to compete.

I get the idea that most people who are complaining about the list haven't even read the website with the explanation of the formula.

I think there might be a tiny bug in the formula, competitiveness. If there is a row of at least two events that are in the same region (make that continent), e.g. Virginia and Michigan, the second event might get a higher competitiveness rating because of the first event. Now sure how big this effect is, though.

Wesley

01-12-2009, 08:30 AM

Budget is a good indication of what people can farm out, and what they have to come up with their own solutions for.

We've got a few indications of budget from judges, and yeah, it's our job to get the money. Having a low budget doesn't make you a better team. Getting more points does! So knowing how many points a team earned given a budget, in my opinion, reflects on how well a team manages that money, how innovative they are in spending it, and how well managed they are in terms of cost overruns.

If team A can make the same points as team B with 50,000 less dollars, team A is a better team.

J.R.

01-12-2009, 08:51 AM

Plus, money is a totally different game in the states, people don't just throw money at the programs like they do in Europe....

Wesley

01-12-2009, 11:58 AM

Yep, the only reason companies have money here is because they're stingy with it.

Europe has a thing called pride - they want to see the schools go out and kick ass. All they see here is a drain on resources.

Bemo

01-13-2009, 04:52 AM

If you think, that companies give us money because of pride, you're extreme wrong.
They give us money because they want to get into contact with talented future engineers, because if a company wants to stay innovative, they need motivated and talented employees.
I don't know the situation in the states, but here in Germany is a significant lack of engineers and a lot of companies have problems to find enough good people.
And as I said before, we use a lot of money to go to overseas competitions (that doesn't make us a better team) and compared to a lot of other teams not so much for high tech features at our car.
At competitions I often talk to people who tell me the same thing, they don't have our budget (would be interesting to know where they have that information from), so they can't really compete with us. But by a look at their car I see quite a lot of design errors, which has nothing at all to do with the budget.
Teams in the USA should think about the fact that at FSAE we got second behind Western Australia with the second car we ever built. There was not one thing at that car, which is really expensive. Aluminum rims, space frame, almost no elctronics which aren't essential for running the car...

You are right, you have to make the best out of the money you have. But money doesn't win competitions. You need a deep understanding of what's going on while your car is running around the track and what the basic things are which make a car fast.

Wesley

01-13-2009, 08:35 AM

I suppose that makes sense too, engineers are still in demand here, but pretty much for a dime a dozen.

I know a lot of the international teams spend a lot on travel - we spend half of our budget on travel, and we only go to the two US competitions. And I also agree that having money won't make you fast. But it certainly helps.

Second, the level of corporate sponsorship seems to be better overseas. As in, companies that are willing to donate time and labor DURING the design process, designing and making a part with the team's input, instead of just donating a part. Is that true at all?

Bemo

01-14-2009, 02:01 AM

In general we design all our parts on our own. In some cases we get support from our partners, but only general advise, the design process itself is always our own work.
We also try to manufacture as much as possible on our own. Of course in some cases that's not possible. To have casted uprights we need a partner who makes them. But that's a good example for something really cool, but not necessary to win.
My experience is, that you just have to ask a lot of companies and you will get a lot of parts for free or at least cheaper. That's of course extra work, but it helps you to be successful, so it is as important as any work on the car itself.

Maverik

01-14-2009, 09:47 PM

Interesting diversion to the original topic. I'd say there could almost be another whole topic based around the idea of money is king. All a team needs are some clever engineers with some clever people to run the 'business' aspects (sponsorship, etc...) and you can have a competitive car. In my experience, "he who plans to be first, must first plan." It's very clear to me when you look at the cars that have been well thought out... they are typically very clean with attention to detail. Those are the cars you see doing well in design, and rocking out in endurance (barring a helmet to far off the seat DNF or plain bad luck.) Most of you that believe a budget makes everything would probably be surprised how much a well though out (non-full carbon monocoque) car really costs to make.

MalcolmG

01-14-2009, 11:18 PM

Most of you that believe a budget makes everything would probably be surprised how much a well though out (non-full carbon monocoque) car really costs to make.
A full monocoque need not add much cost at all. The amount of carbon required to build a well designed FSAE monocoque is suprisingly small, and if you can get a good deal from a sponsor then someone on a smallish budget could pull it off (I doubt Deakin University from Australia have a very large budget, based on the size of their team, and they've been doing them for years)

Hector

01-14-2009, 11:51 PM

It's very clear to me when you look at the cars that have been well thought out... they are typically very clean with attention to detail. Those are the cars you see doing well in design, and rocking out in endurance....

Agreed. We see it time and time again. Judges don't necessarily care what components you run, what your chassis is, or the type of engine that you're running. They want to see justifications for your designs. Sure, trick systems that work as advertised are a boost in design, but in the end it comes down to being able to justify whatever it is you run. If you've got brake lines and stray wires and control cables and whatnot running everywhere, your car may work, but does it look professional? Judges are going to notice these things. With that being said, I would seriously like to see a team try to justify drum brakes...

As far as money vs. performance goes, I have two points to say on the subject.

First, I do not believe that we have reached a "budget cap" on FSAE yet. What I mean by this is that if I were going to start an F1 team, I would need several million dollars ($268 millon, to be exact, per 2009 rules) to be competitive. No way around it. There's simply not a chance that I could even come close to competing in the sport without a significant bank account. Does this exist in FSAE? I don't think so. I think that we are all still within the point of good engineering far outweighing budget discrepancies. I see many teams on the top 10 list (Stuttgart, Wisconsin, Florida) that run simple steel space frames that anyone can build and don't have many "trick" systems. They build reliable, simple cars that handle well and manage to finish most of their races. In the end, if your car DNFs because the rod end that you left in bending fails (right, Pat? ;-) ) no amount of money in the world could have fixed the bad engineering choice there. If you can't make successful systems from steel and aluminum, what makes you think that a budget for titanium and magnesium and carbon will make any difference?

The second thing I have to say about money is that if you still feel like you are not competitive due to a lack of funding, then it is your job to get the funding you need to be competitive. Just like we have to optimize our cars to get the greatest possible percentage of those 1000 possible points, we have to optimize our time to build a that very car. If you feel that your time is better spent taking a week off from car construction/testing and forcing your team to call possible sponsors, then do it. Otherwise, stop complaining. There are too many successful teams in the world (and in the US, yes?) that have the budget to build competitive cars and take them to multiple competitions to complain that a lack of funding is the reason you are not fast. If you have a lack of funding, then the blame rests on no one except yourself.

Bemo

01-15-2009, 04:29 AM

That's exactly what I wanted to say.

Our task is to build race cars and take them to competitions. One part of this task is to get the money for that project.
As in the technical part, not all teams are equaly succesful in that.
I think the problem is, that people join teams, because they want to build a cool car and aren't motivated to do the organising stuff behind like raising money, setting up a schedule and stick to it...
But if these things aren't done properly, it is in my opinion impossible to be succesful.

Wesley

01-16-2009, 08:49 AM

Just out of curiosity, did I actually complain somewhere? Or did I say "Man, we work harder than other teams to get money and don't get as much?"

I'm pretty sure I just said it'd be interesting information. And you can't argue that one away.

PatClarke

01-17-2009, 04:31 AM

Wesley,
maybe part of the problem is the use of the word 'Racing' in the team name?

Marketing managers are flooded with requests from racers asking for money. Unless there is a really good reason for the company to offer support, then most of these applications end up in the round file.

I think you would have more success selling the educational aspects of the event.

Cheers

Pat

flavorPacket

01-17-2009, 12:05 PM

Originally posted by Hector:
I see many teams on the top 10 list (Stuttgart, Wisconsin, Florida) that run simple steel space frames that anyone can build and don't have many "trick" systems. They build reliable, simple cars that handle well and manage to finish most of their races.

Having a simple car does not mean that these teams have small budgets. Don't confuse the two. Furthermore, I think it is a big mistake to leave out a discussion of the infrastructure that these teams enjoy at their respective schools. Whether it's access to good machines, testing areas, faculty support, etc, these schools may have many resources given to them that others have to pay for.

And since when does Wisconsin have a simple car? driver-adjustable ARB, neutral finder on the dash, pneumatic shifiting, the list goes on.

RacingManiac

01-17-2009, 01:35 PM

Just because a school have access have certain resources does not mean they just have those stuff thrown at them. I know with Toronto's case we have to work pretty hard to maintain the relationship we have with our sponsors and school, and its not like we just sit there and sponsors come to us neither. Every season we bring our car to them, show them the product of their generousity, accomodate their promotional need, and host appreciation events for them. And its the same with school working with recruitment and open house events. We don't have a small budget, but we have what we have because we had to work to get it. Having few members every year dedicated to business and managment end helps, but they are no different from the rest of the team who really gets no tangible return for their work(on their own time)other than personal satisfaction, and experiences you can put on your resume. I don't see why other teams can't do the same things we do....and I am sure the situation is the same with any other teams who enjoys what they are getting every year...

Mike Macie

01-17-2009, 04:08 PM

I believe more than anything else that good team management is the reason for the success of most top teams. Even though most "flashy" features are not completely necessary. I don't view these items as a result of a large budget or say we're not smart enough, but rather say that my team doesn't have enough time to do develop some of those things. That comes down to developing a system where you have a small group responsible for each subsystem. Most teams try to do this but there is a lot involved in order for it to be successful.

As for sponsorship, sponsors really like to see some kind of return on there investment. I think the best way is to let them drive the car. Our team did this over the summer with a few local sponsors which resulted in a few "whatever you guys need" responses.

I'm really jealous of how teams can afford to travel and attend multiple competitions a year. Our team participated in two competitions for the first time ever which pretty used up our whole budget. I can't even imagine how much the total cost is for an international competition. Sponsors that can give out cash donations are the hardest to find. To get that to amount around $10k (rough estimate for multiple competition costs) is just amazing to me. I'm not saying that they don't have to work hard for it. Just curious.

Professor Gas Can

01-17-2009, 11:10 PM

I'm really jealous of how teams can afford to travel and attend multiple competitions a year.

I was always jealous of teams that could afford a working dyno. Or a scope that wasn't from the 1960's. Or books. Or thermocouples. Or any of the basic equipment needed to do testing. Or design retreats to the Alps (http://racing.tugraz.at/media/videos/t07-making-of/). The worst offender by far though is them being able to drink beer while they work.

Charlie

01-18-2009, 10:52 AM

Originally posted by flavorPacket:

I think it is a big mistake to leave out a discussion of the infrastructure that these teams enjoy at their respective schools. Whether it's access to good machines, testing areas, faculty support, etc, these schools may have many resources given to them that others have to pay for.

In my opinion, it's disrepectful to say teams have resources 'given to them'. You don't think teams worked hard to establish those relationships and maintain them?

I know during my time at Auburn, hours and hours of time and hard work was spent to begin to establish good relations with faculty and access to machinery, testing areas, etc. And lots of proposals got shot down in flames.

We never sat back and just figured it couldn't be done or that we could never compete with the schools that had this type of foundation. I would encourage anyone else who sees themselves behind the curve to establish the same attitude in the team (vs the 'woe-is-me' attitude I see too much of).

Maverik

01-18-2009, 01:27 PM

Well said pinger

flavorPacket

01-18-2009, 02:17 PM

Originally posted by Charlie:

In my opinion, it's disrepectful to say teams have resources 'given to them'. You don't think teams worked hard to establish those relationships and maintain them?

Well first off, I think I used the wrong word when I said 'given'. I didn't intend to imply that there isn't any investment there. BUT, resources you pay for and resources you don't pay for are very different. Thus, my original point remains: any discussion of a performance per dollar metric is incomplete if you don't account for these resources.

And Charlie, maintaining a relationship is a lot easier than beginning one. Any experienced FSAE member can attest to that.

In my opinion, it's disrespectful to think that teams without lots of on-campus resources aren't trying just as hard to get them just because you were able to make progress with your particular university. There is an element of luck involved. One risk management admin who's a jerk or one purchasing lady with a bad attitude can change everything.

JamesWolak

01-18-2009, 03:58 PM

Originally posted by flavorPacket:
One risk management admin who's a jerk or one purchasing lady with a bad attitude can change everything.

You obviously are a true FSAE member that understands the system.

I have an engine dyno that we dont use because of reasons like this.

Charlie

01-18-2009, 07:56 PM

Originally posted by flavorPacket:
In my opinion, it's disrespectful to think that teams without lots of on-campus resources aren't trying just as hard to get them just because you were able to make progress with your particular university.

I never said that. My example was only to show that it wasn't 'given' to us.

You are right in any given situation, there is some luck involved. But it's how you deal with the problems that makes you a good team. There's always another way to accomplish a goal. Believe me,we had our share of people that tried to discourage us or keep things from happening.

Existing relationships can sometimes be more difficult than establishing new ones. There's a lot of red tape involved once your team becomes more closly aligned with a university. Nothing is free!

Mikey Antonakakis

01-23-2009, 03:53 PM

It's tempting to have the "woe is me" attitude. But we're making steady progress. We received a $5000 donation from the engineering alumni association for a dyno. We're working on getting new sponsors. We are still a relatively small team (as far as student demand to be a part of the team is concerned). That's our biggest obstacle, getting enough students involved. We have way too much work per person. The guy that is in charge of sponsorships is also the guy that does almost all of our welding, and he also makes sure purchases are in order and everything. He simply can't devote all the time that is needed to sponsorships, because he is too busy with everything else. The same goes for the rest of the team. I can find intake design proposals online written by a team of three people. I myself am solely responsible for intake and exhaust design and construction, and engine tuning. On top of that, I have to make sure our new dyno setup will last a few decades. I'm also probably expected to be one of our drivers. Which brings me to the other issue besides manpower: testing. It is next to impossible for us to test our car due to our location in Manhattan. It is at least a two-hour drive to any place we can use legally. It would cost a significant amount to take the car on a two hour trip because we need to rent the transport. Which comes back to money that we don't have because everyone on the team is so busy, which comes back to lack of manpower. At the moment, we have more people than ever, but they are almost all juniors. We are finding it very hard to recruit freshman. Part of that is the atmosphere here. Invariably the first question that is asked about our project when we tell ANYONE on campus about it is "what kind of gas mileage does it get?" or any other generic "green" question. Being a race car, the answer will never be that good. But I do try to make it a point that if it were driven on a highway it would probably get better gas mileage than a Prius.

It may sound like I'm just complaining, but I'm not. Just identifying the issues our team faces, issues we need to figure out how to overcome. I think the one that will probably never go away is the testing/driver training thing (unless someone wants to volunteer their daily driver, but no one here has a car).

Hector

02-18-2009, 07:02 PM

After looking over the Competitveness of Events (http://www.fs-world.org/uploads/media/20090109_FSworld-CompetitivenessOfEvents.pdf) I must say that I think the weighting is not nearly strong enough. I think competitiveness should range from 0.6-1.0 or so.

Could this be considered? I just don't feel like Japan and Brasil can even come close the Michigan.

bob.paasch

02-24-2009, 12:28 PM

Originally posted by Hector:
Could this be considered? I just don't feel like Japan and Brasil can even come close the Michigan.

Given the registered teams, this year I expect Hockenheim will be the standard.

Bemo

07-23-2009, 03:00 AM

Lol...

I just realized that we aren't number one anymore although we won FS UK.
The reason is we gained less than 800 points. Quite funny.

blister

07-23-2009, 03:46 AM

Indeed, but with UWA there is at least a really good team in front of you.

I don`t trust this ranking with us being second amongst the german speaking (well we try to speak german...) teams. I think it has to do something with our focus towards the dynamic events.

I hope we can get into the top 10 before Switzerland joins the EU ;-)

Bemo

07-23-2009, 04:07 AM

UWA is indeed one of the absolute best teams in the world at the moment and I'm really looking forward to compete against them at Hockenheim.
It's going to be a great competition for sure.

flavorPacket

07-23-2009, 10:10 AM

I don't want to start any kind of argument, but I must ask: does anyone else see an issue with Sophia and Tokyo placing 4 and 5, respectively? This seems out of place with the competition results at World Championship events.

07-23-2009, 10:36 AM

Originally posted by Bemo:
Lol...

I just realized that we aren't number one anymore although we won FS UK.
The reason is we gained less than 800 points. Quite funny.

Well then, I guess you shouldn't have gone out in the rain and stop driving while there was oil on the track http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif
We went up one place http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_cool.gif

Cheers,
Miki Hegedus
Delft University of Technology

Bemo

07-23-2009, 11:23 AM

Perhaps that was a mistake. Taking the 120s penalty and driving in the afternoon would have been more clever http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif.

The problem with the Japanese teams is that at the Japanese competition there are usually no overseas teams, so they earn a lot of points there regularly, go up the ranking, increase the competitiveness of their event and go up even more. That's somehow a bug of the ranking system.
But as long as I don't have any better idea for a world ranking system I don't complain.

flavorPacket

07-23-2009, 12:37 PM

Originally posted by Bemo:
The problem with the Japanese teams is that at the Japanese competition there are usually no overseas teams, so they earn a lot of points there regularly, go up the ranking, increase the competitiveness of their event and go up even more. That's somehow a bug of the ranking system.
But as long as I don't have any better idea for a world ranking system I don't complain.

Perhaps the results could be normalized according to results at the World Championship?

MalcolmG

07-23-2009, 03:07 PM

But that wouldn't work now that there's no world championship event to speak of (although it seems like FS Germany is becoming this by default).

flavorPacket

07-23-2009, 03:19 PM

Sounds good to me. I personally don't mind having to send a team to Europe every summer...

Pennyman

07-25-2009, 10:37 PM

Wow, 63rd after our first event. You just wait http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

Thrainer

10-11-2009, 04:00 PM

On the World Ranking website "under construction" ( http://www.fs-world.org/ ), is this the actual list? http://mazur-events.de/fs-world/

It hasn't been updated since FS UK. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_frown.gif

FStotal.com

11-17-2009, 07:12 AM

here is a update of the list:

FSAE World Ranking (http://mazur-events.de/fs-world/)

regulations of the list (http://fs-w.org/)

Crispy

11-28-2009, 10:19 AM

What criteria determines if an event is included in the world ranking? For example why is FS Austria not included? Obviously we at Oregon State would love to see it included http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

terra_dactile

11-28-2009, 01:11 PM

Hey Chris,
I believe it will never be included as long as austria does not have a cost event, the competitions that base themselves dircetly on events of formula sae series are all included. You guys put on really impressive efforts in FSG and FSA, I cant wait to see your new car as Detroit seems like it will be a good battle feild next summer with more Europeen teams making the trip!

Jude Berthault
ETS FSAE 2003-2009
ISMANS 2009-2010
Le Mans,France

STRETCH

11-30-2009, 06:13 AM

Number 1 team in the UK... EPIC!

bob.paasch

11-30-2009, 09:32 AM

Originally posted by terra_dactile:
You guys put on really impressive efforts in FSG and FSA, I cant wait to see your new car as Detroit seems like it will be a good battle feild next summer with more Europeen teams making the trip!

Jude Berthault

Might not be the new car Jude, as the car we had at California, FSG & FSA last summer is still eligible for Michigan. Got to keep you guys guessing... ;^) ;^)

I agree, Michigan should be a good competition next year. But assuming UWA and RMIT head to FSG again, Hockenheim will be the place to be in 2010.

Crispy

12-04-2009, 07:10 AM

I believe it will never be included as long as austria does not have a cost event, the competitions that base themselves dircetly on events of formula sae series are all included.

I figured it was something like that. But it sure was a fun event.

DMuusers

09-13-2010, 05:29 AM

Who cares about the world ranking anyways? I mean, everybody sort of knows who the best teams are right? Besides, the world ranking has always been biased towards the competition in Japan, since no one goes there. If you win in Japan, you'll be at the top of the board at some point.

JasperC

09-13-2010, 09:16 AM

Well, I can tell you we did care about the world ranking last winter when we dropped out of the top 10 just before registration for FSG, meaning we lost our early registration slot. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif

Kinds regards,

Jasper

DUT Racing Team 2008-2010

DMuusers

09-15-2010, 08:49 AM

But that means we only care when it matters to us. And it only matters to us when a competition regards the world ranking as important. So that leaves the question, is the world ranking relevant?

BeunMan

11-05-2010, 06:14 AM

Relevant: yes, should it be: no.

I think there needs to be a more statistically correct method of measuring the competativeness of a competition. But don't ask me how, I merely had (6/10) for my statistics class.

Mike Cook

11-05-2010, 05:08 PM

I think that someone should take a shifter kart around to all the competitions and drive the courses to set a baseline time. Not all that scientific, but would probably work.

TMichaels

01-06-2012, 02:24 AM

Hello Everybody,
Daniel just updated the world ranking list.

Some explanations are necessary:

Only events with at least 10 participating teams are taken into account.

If the event is a pure combustion event, the competitiveness will be based on the combustion world ranking list.

If the event is a pure electric event, the competitiveness will be based on the electric world ranking list.

If the event is a mixture of classes where two or more classes compete for the same points, the competitiveness will be based on a combined world ranking list.

The events are color coded for that purpose:
Blue: Only combustion cars competing
Yellow: Only electric cars competing
Green: Combustion and electric cars competing
Purple: Hybrid and electric cars competing

The current rankings can be found at FS World Ranking (http://mazur-events.de/fs-world/)

bob.paasch

01-06-2012, 10:14 AM

Hi Tobias:

3 of the top 4 combustion teams in the world are from Japan? FSAE Japan is almost as competitive as FSG???? (0.95 vs 0.96)

You guys seem to have built an endless loop:

Japanese teams ranked highly, therefore:
FSAE Japan ranked competitively, therefore:
Japanese teams ranked highly, etc.
repeat

The top Japanese teams are good teams, probably top 20 in the world, but not top 5. They have never won a competition outside Japan, and often aren't even competitive. See Osaka's results from FSAE-A.

I wouldn't care about this ranking except that it's used for early registrations for FSG. If I were Michigan, ETS, Zwickau, Hamburg or Maryland, I'd be pretty disappointed with this ranking. Any of those teams could win Japan by 50 points. IMHO. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif

TMichaels

01-06-2012, 10:56 AM

Bob,
I think this is not the whole story.

Osaka has only been to FSAE-A in 2011 as far as I know, but since the scores have not been published there position in the world ranking is currently not affected by this event. They have been scoring consistently for three years in a row. Continuity is rewarded by the World Ranking.

Sophia scored well in their last 7 events, including two times FSAE-A where they competed against teams like Monash, UWA and RMIT coming in third both times.

Yokohama also scored high in the last 3 years, again it is a matter of being constant.

[Provoking Mode = On]
If it would be so easy to just fly to Japan and win by 50 points or more, why does no one do it or did it before?

And regarding winning a competition outside of Japan...that means nothing in my opinion. Just take Delft for example: They never won an event outside of Germany...or Wisconsin-Madison, they never won an event outside of the US. Both are truely top-teams or have been at that time.
[Provoking Mode = Off]

We are well aware of the problem that events which are not well networked form their own biosphere with respect to the World Ranking List. But as long as nobody comes up with a good solution (which is not: just rank event xyz down, because they never compete outside of their country), we will stick to the current solution.

Never forget that going overseas costs a lot of money, which you probably know better than me, and it is very easy for an european team to compete in several other events, but not for an autralian or japanese team.
Therefore it may be assumed, but can not be proven, that events which are more or less isolated are ranked too high with respect to competitiveness.

Kevin Hayward

01-06-2012, 04:46 PM

Bob,

Part of the problem will be fixed following the latest Australian competition. Three good Japanese teams came down and did not score well. It will knock them down the rankings and will lower the competitiveness of the Japanese comp.

Maybe some teams should consider going to Japan and trying to win if they are concerned about world rankings. With a high competitiveness a big win would place a team very well in the world rankings.

If we truly want a world ranking and not a Europe/American ranking then teams ignore the more distant comps at the risk to their own rankings.

Kev

TMichaels

01-06-2012, 05:00 PM

Just to clear things up:
The latest Australasia event was not included, because the final results have not been completely published yet.

The only thing which could be considered is some kind of "networking factor" which lowers the competitiveness of an event, if it is too isolated. However this may make the world ranking look more like someone would expect it to look like, but not necessarily more correct.

Some time ago I took the data on which the world ranking list is based and wrote a very simple programm drawing circles for each event. I'm using a special algorithm, VennEuler, which aims to match the overlapping areas of the circles to the number of teams that took part in both events. Please note that due to the nature of the circle intersections these images may not be quantitatively correct but qualitatively and should give a good feeling for the "networking" of the events. For example some correct intersections can just not be created without creating wrong intersections. I should probably also try to find a way to display it numerically.

The number of teams attending the respective event is given in brackets behind the events name.
http://www8.picfront.org/picture/9hFcwaqIlc/thb/2007-AllEvents.png (http://picfront.de/d/8thL)
http://www8.picfront.org/picture/DuvMp8bZ/thb/2008-AllEvents.png (http://picfront.de/d/8thK)
http://www8.picfront.org/picture/KOGOBr3moha/thb/2009-AllEvents.png (http://picfront.de/d/8thJ)

Hopefully I find the time to let my program create these diagrams for the seasons 2010 and 2011.

Jakob

01-07-2012, 08:30 AM

Originally posted by bob.paasch:
...
I wouldn't care about this ranking except that it's used for early registrations for FSG.f I were Michigan, ETS, Zwickau, Hamburg or Maryland, I'd be pretty disappointed with this ranking.
...

When this is the problem, why not allow e.g. the top 30 teams to enter the early registration, but still provide just 10 slots for them. When the early registration ends, fill the 10 slots from the top 30 teams which attended in the early registration, starting from the top .

So teams from another "network" will either not block the slots, or will show - when the start at the competition - if the can keep there top posititon in the world ranking.

Maybe reduce the number of available slots, because it is more likely that they will be used.

What do you think?

TMichaels

01-08-2012, 05:23 AM

Cole,
we have decided to not include the FH competition for two major reasons:

1) The points distribution and structure in FH is very different compared to the combustion and electric events and even to the events allowing hybrids which means that the points scored can not be directly compared to the other events.

2) There is only one event, Formula Hybrid, with a significant number of teams competing which would be valid for the world ranking list. The other two events that allow hybrids are not even close to the limit of 10 teams and according to my memory there are only three teams, Drexel, MADI and Torino, that have ever been participating in Formula Hybrid and one of the other hybrid allowing events. That means that Formula Hybrid more or less directly gives a world ranking. Therefore it would be a lot of effort to generate information which is already available IMHO.

Jakob

01-08-2012, 07:46 AM

Originally posted by Jakob:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by bob.paasch:
...
I wouldn't care about this ranking except that it's used for early registrations for FSG.f I were Michigan, ETS, Zwickau, Hamburg or Maryland, I'd be pretty disappointed with this ranking.
...

When this is the problem, why not allow e.g. the top 30 teams to enter the early registration, but still provide just 10 slots for them. When the early registration ends, fill the 10 slots from the top 30 teams which attended in the early registration, starting from the top .

So teams from another "network" will either not block the slots, or will show - when the start at the competition - if the can keep there top posititon in the world ranking.

Maybe reduce the number of available slots, because it is more likely that they will be used.

What do you think? </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Ok - no answer is also an answer. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif

Jakob

TMichaels

01-08-2012, 11:04 AM

Jakob,
you are too fast with your implied assumption and are making a judgement without the necessary background.
At FSG we are a committee deciding how to conduct the early registration and since your approach seems to be interesting, I was just waiting for a chance to discuss it with the other members of the committee before answering.
Additionally it is a bit presumptuous to think that an official answer can be given to such a complex topic in just 24hrs. So just be patient, there will be a reply regarding your suggested approach.

Jakob

01-08-2012, 01:08 PM

Originally posted by TMichaels:
... since your approach seems to be interesting, I was just waiting for a chance to discuss it with the other members of the committee before answering.
...

That's all I wanted to hear. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif

By the way, I'm aware that you and your colleagues doing all this stuff in your free time and you can be sure, that I - and think every participants of the FSG event - are very, very thankful for all your work. It's a great event and is even getting better from year to year! http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

Maybe the Teams should say this more often! http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

Jakob

Boffin

01-08-2012, 06:52 PM

Originally posted by bob.paasch:
The top Japanese teams are good teams, probably top 20 in the world, but not top 5. They have never won a competition outside Japan, and often aren't even competitive. See Osaka's results from FSAE-A.

I wouldn't care about this ranking except that it's used for early registrations for FSG. If I were Michigan, ETS, Zwickau, Hamburg or Maryland, I'd be pretty disappointed with this ranking. Any of those teams could win Japan by 50 points. IMHO. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif I believe that is an unfair dig at Osaka.

The problem with Australia is the track is too technical. You really need to dance and throw a car around the tight track to get fast times, something which novice or inexperienced drivers cannot/will not do.

Conversely, Japan has a nice flowing track, that's open and does not punish mistakes as much. It is not as daunting to a new driver, with 8 & 10 meter slaloms, compared to the Australian 5ish meters.
The best way to explain this is to take a speed histogram of both events. Australia's is wide and short, but Japan's is narrow and tall, with the peak being in about the same place.
This is one important difference.

At the current level of competition between all the cars worldwide, it is too hard to make blanket statements like that when a team competes far from its home event. Osaka had a greatly reduced team size in Australia, compared to Japan. Did their gun drivers come? I'm not sure.

And judging by your comments, you would have expected us to finish higher than 4th in the event, considering we finished 2nd in Australia? Let me tell you there are a couple of surprises at the event which can catch you out (cost event for instance). Additionally our gun driver (Blanchard) for the past 2 years was not able to come.

We beat Sophia in 2010 in Australia, yet we were about 140 points behind them in Japan 2011 (they won) and over 100 points behind Osaka in 3rd. Had we competed this year in Australia (combustion was canned at Swinburne), we would have been well ahead of Osaka, yet they beat us well at truly in Japan.
And yet you conclude this to mean that Osaka is not a top 10 team world wide, when we are/were sitting at #26

bob.paasch

01-08-2012, 09:25 PM

Originally posted by TMichaels:
Sophia scored well in their last 7 events, including two times FSAE-A where they competed against teams like Monash, UWA and RMIT coming in third both times.

Yes, Sophia was 3rd both times. But that's somewhat deceptive. In 2008, Sophia was 219 points behind 1st place Stuttgart. In 2010 they were 168 points behind 1st place Monash. That's not particularly competitive.

[Provoking Mode = On]
If it would be so easy to just fly to Japan and win by 50 points or more, why does no one do it or did it before?
[Provoking Mode = Off]

I like the provoking mode Tobi. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

No one goes to Japan for the same reason no one goes to Brazil. It's bloody expensive and no one really cares who wins. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif

Continuity is rewarded by the World Ranking.

Yes, that's how you guys decided to set up your algorithm. Strong reward for reliability. That was a choice, and it fits your culture.

[Provoking Mode = On]
I think most people in FSAE would consider Michigan (FSAE-M), Silverstone (FS-UK) and Hockenheim (FSC) the top three competitions as to competitiveness, regardless of their "FS world ranking competitiveness" scores. (A side note: for 2012 I expect FSAE-Nebraska will be more competitive than FS-UK.)

Consider these 2011 placings:

Rennteam Stuttgart: FSAE-M: 3rd, FS-UK: 1st, FSC: 3rd

TU Fast: FSAE-M: 2nd, FS-UK: 2nd, FSC: 2nd

GFR: FSAE-M: 1st, FS-UK: 15th, FSC: 1st

The FS world ranking algorithm severely penalizes the last record. But I ask, given a choice at the beginning of the season, which of these records would your team rather have? http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_razz.gif

Originally posted by Kevin Hayward "Any way to objectively choose engine?" 4 Dec 2011:

So how does this affect our designs:
- Designing for a small comp is different than designing for a large comp. Reliability will net higher rewards for a competition with less entrants. Conversely in a larger competition it is more likely that a team that takes risks for performance will be more likely to win. However it might be more difficult to pick the winner.

- You should know your competitors very well. If you can accurately assess the required level of performance of winning teams and the reliability of the competitions. If you can make a game changer you have the potential to be very successful. I would call a game changer a car with either significantly more performance with no drop in reliability, or one with close to top performance with huge reliability. I would say that GFR/UWA might fit into the first lot and Stuttgart/RMIT in the second camp.

Kev

Bingo. I've been wanting to respond to Kev's post, but I haven't had time.

[Provoking Mode = Off]

Again, the only reason I care is for FSG priority registration. I like Jakob's solution.

TMichaels

01-09-2012, 06:02 AM

Yes, Sophia was 3rd both times. But that's somewhat deceptive. In 2008, Sophia was 219 points behind 1st place Stuttgart. In 2010 they were 168 points behind 1st place Monash. That's not particularly competitive.
Yes, but they managed to score more points than all the teams behind them, which still shows that they can not be as far behind. And to be honest, it is not a great shame to be 219pts behind the Stuttgart team from 2008 as UWA, who placed second, were also 161pts behind for example. That could be an artefact of the Stuttgart team who ruled the events at that time.
The second placed team in 2010 was Swinburne and they were also 112pts behind winner Monash. These were, in my opinion, just two events with a dominating team winning.

Additionally, if you have a lot of teams that are overall equally competitive, everyone will score less points overall. Now given one dominating team and a bunch of teams which are very close to each other you end up with an even bigger gap between these teams and the winner without the size of the gap containing useful information.

I think most people in FSAE would consider Michigan (FSAE-M), Silverstone (FS-UK) and Hockenheim (FSC) the top three competitions as to competitiveness, regardless of their "FS world ranking competitiveness" scores. (A side note: for 2012 I expect FSAE-Nebraska will be more competitive than FS-UK.)
If you will have a look at the competiveness scores for these three events you will notice that they match your statements.

The FS world ranking algorithm severely penalizes the last record. But I ask, given a choice at the beginning of the season, which of these records would your team rather have?

I think the answer to that question is obvious, even if the placings would have been first in one of these competions and dnf in the other two while the other choice is placing on the podium in all three events without winning one. But that is not what the World Ranking is all about.

A good example for this in general is TU Munich (please forgive me guys, I do not want to offend you). They built fast cars and had great teams in 2005 to 2008 (they are still a TopTeam, I am just referring to that time slice) for example and were always a possible event winner, but also struggled to drive it home in that time, usually by failing Endurance. I think nobody competing in that time would have been in doubt that they were a true top team in general, but they did not place well in the WR, because to finish first you have to finish first. There is no room for gut feelings in my opinion.

It is of course a World Ranking by definition and the definition currently is ours, but we are always open for constructive feedback.

As far as I understand the teams appreciate the chance of Early Registration, which is, regarding the way we do it and how many places we offer, unique in the community.

bob.paasch

01-09-2012, 07:21 AM

Originally posted by Boffin:
Let me tell you there are a couple of surprises at the event which can catch you out (cost event for instance).

I notice the same thing from Michigan Ann Arbor's trip to FSAE Japan, they got killed in cost. What are the surprises in the FSAE-J cost event?

bob.paasch

01-09-2012, 03:33 PM

Originally posted by TMichaels:
It is of course a World Ranking by definition and the definition currently is ours, but we are always open for constructive feedback.

As far as I understand the teams appreciate the chance of Early Registration, which is, regarding the way we do it and how many places we offer, unique in the community.

I want to make it clear that I very much appreciate what FSG has done to enhance the educational aspects of the competition. Reserving places for teams from different parts of the world enhances student interaction and cultural appreciation, very important for globalized design and manufacturing. Reserving spots for top teams (both previous FSG and world ranking) raises the technical level of the competition. Both serve the students very well, and they help make FSG the premier FSAE/FS competition in the world.

But I want to pick up on Kevin's thread from "Any way to objectively choose engine?" because it's relevant here. Sometimes there's a trade-off between reliability and ultimate performance. A team has to decide their design strategy: "fast and very reliable", or "very fast and somewhat less reliable".

So too win a small competition, certainly you need to finish endurance, but you only need to be faster than any of the small group of endurance finishers. The one or two "very fast and somewhat less reliable" teams might not finish, so a "fast and very reliable" team can win.

To win a big, competitive competition like FSG you need to finish endurance, and you have to be faster than everyone else in a big group of endurance finishers. There will be multiple "very fast and somewhat less reliable" teams, and odds are at least one will finish. The "fast and very reliable" team will not win.

The world ranking algorithm rewards "fast and very reliable". But FSG might also want to encourage the "very fast and somewhat less reliable" teams to attend.

TMichaels

01-09-2012, 04:02 PM

I doubt that a very fast car necessarily has to be less reliable. As far as I remember GFR did not manage to restart the car after driver change at FS UK 2011. How does this failure relate to being fast (or not being fast)? Asked the other way round: Would you really have been slower, if the car had been built in a way that this problem could not occur?

JulianH

01-09-2012, 04:56 PM

First of all, it's great to have the world ranking back.

Of course there is always an algorithm that favors one or the other competitor. Maybe Japan is "overrated", it doesn't really matter, you can always compare yourself to other teams that are competing with yourself.

So therefore there are maybe one or two teams which probably would have made the cut to get into the Top Ten for the

registration (I'm thinking of ETS or Maryland as Dr. Paasch pointed out) but if these teams consider coming to Germany,
they definitely put enough effort into the secound registration quiz to get a spot.

One nice feature for the early registration would be to give the Top 3 of the other big competitions (UK,Michigan,Lincoln,etc.) a spot too. They should deserve it. Maybe then split into "Top Team"-Spots and "Rest of the World"-Spots.

Another thing that Norbert pointed out in the FSG-Forum is that with the winning points at the events.

In the next season I'm pretty sure that the winner of FS UK will have a very small number of overall points because of the

merged classes. There are disciplines that definitely favor E-Cars (Accel, Energy) and other disciplines like Auto-X or Cost that are still (in my opinion) better for the combustion cars (but we surely trying to get at least the Auto-X-Part

to the E-cars this year http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif). So therefore it's more difficult to score high at mixed events (Austria (GFR lost about 55

Points in Energy compared to Germany there!), England) than at only combustion-events like FSG.

Maybe the algorithm should take the points of the winning team and compare the other competitors to that number.
This would also take out the different appoaches to the Design Event (in UK the Design Winner doesn't necessarily take 150 Points).

Anyway, I guess FSG 2012 will be definitely "the place to be", with great teams from all over the world (to bad that Monash didn't follow my suggestion to come to Germany http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif)

And Dr. Paasch, I guess FS UK will be as interessting as every other "big" event with the first time the combustions have to take on the electric cars. Should be great to see if our "Eco-Cars" can turn their advantage in Fuel Economy into a win... Hopefully your E-Car will be ready for Silverstone this year! FSAE Lincoln is also a great event but there are no European teams so probably not as competitive and I just saw that GFR won't compete there?! Am I correct that you are planning to run Michigan, Hockenheim, Spielberg and probably Italy with the C-Car and Silverstone, Hockenheim and maybe a south european event with the E-Car?

bob.paasch

01-09-2012, 06:51 PM

Originally posted by TMichaels:
I doubt that a very fast car necessarily has to be less reliable. As far as I remember GFR did not manage to restart the car after driver change at FS UK 2011. How does this failure relate to being fast (or not being fast)? Asked the other way round: Would you really have been slower, if the car had been built in a way that this problem could not occur?

Regards,

Tobias

At some point, all the suspension, tire and aero wizardry is pushed as far as it can go, and increasing performance beyond that really comes down to more power and less weight. This results in smaller safety margins, and less reliable systems.

Our failure at FS UK resulted from two "marginal" systems:

1) The electric starter geartrain in the CRF450X is very light but not particularly robust. We had a factory press fit loosen slightly, causing some slippage between gear and shaft.

2) Our LiP battery is very lightweight, but doesn't provide much margin over the power needed to start the engine under ideal conditions.

So yes, increasing the reliability of these systems would increase weight and decrease performance. Not much, but there are a lot of single point failure possibilities in an FSAE car.

We are finding that with the aero, we could really use another 5 HP. Unlike the 600s, the 450s in FSAE operate at close to stock HP or above. I'm very concerned about what another 5 HP would do to reliability.

Another area is fuel efficiency/economy. I expect the best 600 teams, to stay competitive with the 450s, are running very lean, and with a lot of advance. Push that too far and your engine doesn't last.

bob.paasch

01-15-2012, 12:28 PM

Originally posted by JD944:
In the next season I'm pretty sure that the winner of FS UK will have a very small number of overall points because of the merged classes. There are disciplines that definitely favor E-Cars (Accel, Energy) and other disciplines like Auto-X or Cost that are still (in my opinion) better for the combustion cars (but we surely trying to get at least the Auto-X-Part to the E-cars this year http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif).

I disagree. The good E-cars are quite capable of scoring 900 points at Silverstone. Don't forget, Delft had the 2nd fastest sprint at FSUK 2011. They were slower in endurance because that was their strategy (energy efficiency was 200 points) and because of the wet track.

And Dr. Paasch, I guess FS UK will be as interesting as every other "big" event with the first time the combustions have to take on the electric cars. Should be great to see if our "Eco-Cars" can turn their advantage in Fuel Economy into a win... Hopefully your E-Car will be ready for Silverstone this year! FSAE Lincoln is also a great event but there are no European teams so probably not as competitive and I just saw that GFR won't compete there?! Am I correct that you are planning to run Michigan, Hockenheim, Spielberg and probably Italy with the C-Car and Silverstone, Hockenheim and maybe a south european event with the E-Car?

GFR will be at Michigan with the C-car, and we are registered take both C and E-cars to Hockenheim and Speilberg. We are not planning on attending any other competitions.

GFR will not be at Silverstone with either car in 2012. I don't want to sound like a whiner, but I was not favorably impressed with the organization of FSUK. I think the decision-making by the organizers during endurance was atrocious, and the following quote is verbatum from our design scoresheet: "too much focus on performance". The after-event party was great though... http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif

GFR will not be at Nebraska, but there will be a number of very fast teams there: RIT, Oklahoma, Kansas, Wisconsin, Maryland, South Dakota SMT, Missouri S&T. And Texas A&M is back to FSAE after dominating Formula Hybrid the last 4 years. Even without any European teams, this will be a very competitive event.

JulianH

01-15-2012, 01:51 PM

Sad to hear, that GFR isn't competing in Silverstone. It was great to have your "party tent" next to us in 2010 and also it's a loss for the competition.

I'm still not convinced about 900 points for the winning E-Car. I would still guess that a combustion car will win Auto-X. Maybe Monash will do this in this year's competition http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

Well the Endurance was quiet disappointing last year but the weather was not on the side of the top teams... Bad luck I guess. Maybe there would have been time to wait but if I remember correctly there is always this 18:00 limit to race.

Concerning the Design Event, we received a similar feedback (not capable for mass production) but well that's the competition... Try to sell 1000 cars...

But we are looking forward to see GFR in Germany and Austria. Will be great.

But back to topic:

I would still recommend to base the World ranking on the winner's scoring rather than on the total number of points.

Monash lost a couple of places while winning FSAE-A. That's strange...

Fantomas

01-15-2012, 02:26 PM

I would still guess that a combustion car will win Auto-X.
I doubt that, why do you think so? They should have a lower COG, similar weight, more torque everywhere and way better measures to control this torque.
Acceleration will also be dominated by the electric cars, at SkidPad there should be no difference and also not at the statics.
In Endurance the E-Cars may suffer a bit, but will get way higher combined scores (economy and endurance).

Fantomas

JulianH

01-15-2012, 02:37 PM

I'm not sure.

Basically in Silverstone, the performance is greatly dependend on how much you could test before the event.

In my experience it's more difficult to get an E-Car running. (GFR can tell you a story, I guess http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif).

Additionally the E-Cars aren't that well known so far. Torque Vectoring etc. is possible but you have to get it together...

If Delft's 4WD is working perfectly in Silverstone they surely can look at the top spots...

Maybe we see a change this year, our learning margin is still greater than on the combustions.

The difference in Economy is probably about 30 points. That's a lot but still not a knock-out for the combustion teams.

Fantomas

01-15-2012, 02:46 PM

I nver did the math, but probably it is worth to try to sort Delft's last year performance into the combustion scoring scheme and see, if they would have been in the Top3. I think they would have made it, but it is only a gut feeling.

BTW: I just saw that Monash has registered for FSG.

Fantomas

JulianH

01-15-2012, 03:04 PM

Monash also wants to compete in Silverstone.

I did some small calculations and Stuttgart would have won about 115 Points against Delft in the Endurance while losing about 50 points in economy... (rough estimation)

(With 2012 scoring)

So because Stuttgart won with about 100 points, they could have made the Top 3 but still I guess it's wrong to say that Electric cars have an unfair advantage.

bob.paasch

01-15-2012, 06:42 PM

Originally posted by JD944:
Well the Endurance was quiet disappointing last year but the weather was not on the side of the top teams... Bad luck I guess. Maybe there would have been time to wait but if I remember correctly there is always this 18:00 limit to race.

The rain stopped around 1500, so the FSUK organizers had 3 hours to run endurance for the top 6 cars. They waited 15 minutes.

Originally posted by Fantomas:
BTW: I just saw that Monash has registered for FSG.
Fantomas

That is fantastic news!

Scott Wordley

01-15-2012, 08:00 PM

Hey guys,

We are trying really hard to get to FS-UK, FS-A and FS-G this year.

Unfortunately we are only on the waiting list for FS-A at the moment. We really hope we can compete there, and get a chance to demonstrate what our KTM engine can do. We will see how the waiting list goes I guess, fingers crossed.

Also there may yet be changes to the recent FSAE-A scoring which might change the current world rankings. Its possible we could go back up, maybe even to third place. Should know in the next few days.

Luniz

01-16-2012, 01:49 AM

Originally posted by bob.paasch:
The rain stopped around 1500, so the FSUK organizers had 3 hours to run endurance for the top 6 cars. They waited 15 minutes.

Dear Dr. Paasch, I do agree with you that the last UK event has been somewhat chaotic in Terms of organisation. There have been a few issues between the management and the teams, mostly concerning the (ridiculously unsafe) track. And I also support your decision of not going there this year.
But I must say that I don't understand your complaint about the Endurance. From my point of view, there is a running order and if your team unfortunately gets to run on a wet track than that is just bad luck. And if I was an official, I would not do any changes to the running order either. Sure, you could try to squeeze the top 4 teams into a dry spot in the running order, but you could also do that for the Top5 cars, or just the Top3, and you can be sure that the first team not enjoying this advantage will complain.
Rain during Endurance has a big effect on the scorings, but there's nothing you can do about it. It's racing...

TMichaels

01-16-2012, 01:58 AM

Monash lost a couple of places while winning FSAE-A. That's strange...
Not really in my opinion. The world ranking list shows how much points a team averagely scores, not if it wins a competition or not. That means theoretically that, if you take the ranking of the list before an event, eliminate all the teams not participating at that particular event, the result of the event should be close to the ranking of the remaining world ranking, at least for the teams finishing Endurance.
I will try to put a comparison together for some competitions as it should be quite interesting to see, if my assumption is right or not.
Thinking about it, it should be the ranking list at the end of the season, that should be used, not at the beginning, as it reflects the team's performance of that season then, while the ranking list before the event shows the accomplishments of the team that ran the season before.

I would still recommend to base the World ranking on the winner's scoring rather than on the total number of points.
Could you explain how your proposed formula would look like?

@Scott:
We are aware that the FSAE-A scores may change and will change them accordingly.

JulianH

01-16-2012, 02:30 AM

I'm not sure if this formula is "fair" but I had something like:

Points for WR = (Your Points)/(Winner's Points)*1000

This would mean that you can always look how good the performance compared to the other teams at this competition has been.

You still should see how a team performed against its rivals at that competition.

I know that something like Stuttgart's sweep at Australia 08 would only be represented with the large difference to P2 and not for themselves, that's correct.

But if you look at FSA or now FSUK.
The best combustion team will score about 30 points less with E-Cars running in the competition in Fuel Economy than in Germany with the same performance but two classes.

(Coventry won Economy at FSUK 2011 and would have scored 63 Points instead of 100 points if Delft had run in the same class).

TMichaels

01-16-2012, 02:50 AM

With our without using a competitivness factor?

Anyhow, that would contradict the concept of the world ranking list showing how many points a team scores in average, if it would compete against all other teams of the WR list in the same competition.

TMichaels

01-18-2012, 01:39 AM

At some point, all the suspension, tire and aero wizardry is pushed as far as it can go, and increasing performance beyond that really comes down to more power and less weight. This results in smaller safety margins, and less reliable systems.

Our failure at FS UK resulted from two "marginal" systems:

1) The electric starter geartrain in the CRF450X is very light but not particularly robust. We had a factory press fit loosen slightly, causing some slippage between gear and shaft.

2) Our LiP battery is very lightweight, but doesn't provide much margin over the power needed to start the engine under ideal conditions.

So yes, increasing the reliability of these systems would increase weight and decrease performance. Not much, but there are a lot of single point failure possibilities in an FSAE car.

We are finding that with the aero, we could really use another 5 HP. Unlike the 600s, the 450s in FSAE operate at close to stock HP or above. I'm very concerned about what another 5 HP would do to reliability.

Another area is fuel efficiency/economy. I expect the best 600 teams, to stay competitive with the 450s, are running very lean, and with a lot of advance. Push that too far and your engine doesn't last.

In general I would agree, the question is: What would in your opinion be the right measure to account for this in the world ranking? If a team would have one "free shot" per season meaning a result that is not taken into account, this will have quite different effects, whether a team enters 6 competitions or 2. It would always favour teams participating in a smaller number of events. For example a team could take part in a very competitive competion (C=0.95), finish endurance and still only get 650pts which would lead to 617.5pts used for the WRL. If the same team now competes in a smaller event, which is less competitive (C=0.89), it will get 870pts which leads to 774.3pts. The result of the more competitive event will be rejected and the team will end up in a spot that it does not really deserve at least higher than if both comps would have been taken into account.

Mbirt

01-18-2012, 09:53 AM

Originally posted by bob.paasch:
1) The electric starter geartrain in the CRF450X is very light but not particularly robust. We had a factory press fit loosen slightly, causing some slippage between gear and shaft.
...
We are finding that with the aero, we could really use another 5 HP. Unlike the 600s, the 450s in FSAE operate at close to stock HP or above. I'm very concerned about what another 5 HP would do to reliability. A member on ThumperTalk or the TRX450R forum, can't remember, has run successfully with a welded starter reduction "pressed gear". If my team was still running a Honda single, I would slip in a welded gear just for endurance. We also got into the habit of replacing the starter clutch on Friday night of competition. Yet another price to pay for the low safety factor of the engine...

About that extra 5hp vs. reliability... ETS goes as far as running a Falicon long-rod stock-stroke crankshaft in their WR450 with a bore spacer. They spin it to speeds that the Honda valvetrain won't support, but this does show that there are endurance-type modifications out there for these motors if you have the cash for them.

bob.paasch

01-21-2012, 08:09 PM

Originally posted by TMichaels:
In general I would agree, the question is: What would in your opinion be the right measure to account for this in the world ranking? If a team would have one "free shot" per season meaning a result that is not taken into account, this will have quite different effects, whether a team enters 6 competitions or 2. It would always favour teams participating in a smaller number of events. For example a team could take part in a very competitive competion (C=0.95), finish endurance and still only get 650pts which would lead to 617.5pts used for the WRL. If the same team now competes in a smaller event, which is less competitive (C=0.89), it will get 870pts which leads to 774.3pts. The result of the more competitive event will be rejected and the team will end up in a spot that it does not really deserve at least higher than if both comps would have been taken into account.

Hi Tobias:

As I see it, the world ranking has two uses: 1) determining who gets early registration for FSG, and 2) bragging. For early registration, another method would be to give the top X finishers at the other competitions an early slot, with X determined by the competitiveness of the competition.

For example, you could give the top 5 at Michigan an early slot, but maybe only the top 3 at California/Nebraska/FSUK and top 2 at Australia. The top 5 at 2011 Michigan were GFR, TU Munich, Stuttgart, TU Graz and Wisconsin, the first three already qualified for early registration based on their (identical) finishes at 2011 FSG, and if I'm trying to put together a top competition, I'd be thrilled if Graz and Wisconsin show up. The top 3 at California were ETS, Oklahoma and Wisconsin, inviting ETS and Oklahoma to register early would be a no-brainer. Offering early registration to the top 3 from FSUK (Stuttgart, TU Munich and Hertfordshire) wouldn't give you anyone that didn't already have an early spot from FSG, but Australia would produce Monash and UWA.. Now FSC is looking like the world championship.

Of course most of these teams will be at FSC anyway. Monash ended up being the only team to register early for 2012 FSC based on the world ranking. ETS got in, but I'm sure they would have appreciated an early slot.

I'm not saying this method would be better than what you're doing now, but it would give a slightly different set of teams, with some teams capable of winning FSC that would have been left out of the top 10 world ranking.

As for bragging rights and who is #1, those discussions are best made at the after-event parties. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

Fantomas

01-25-2012, 03:37 AM

Originally posted by Luniz:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by bob.paasch:
The rain stopped around 1500, so the FSUK organizers had 3 hours to run endurance for the top 6 cars. They waited 15 minutes.

Dear Dr. Paasch, I do agree with you that the last UK event has been somewhat chaotic in Terms of organisation. There have been a few issues between the management and the teams, mostly concerning the (ridiculously unsafe) track. And I also support your decision of not going there this year. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Your team seems not to share your thoughts http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif They are registered for FS UK 2012 according the website.

Fantomas

Luniz

01-25-2012, 08:40 AM

I have seen that too... By the way, they are my ex-team ;-)

I checked with them earlier today, they told me that they are going to withdraw. They wanted to keep up the option as long as possible and see whether they would pass this business thingy.

Bemo

01-26-2012, 05:36 AM

In my opinion it is getting more and more senseless to have a world ranking list since scoring systems at different competitions get more different from year to year.
There are mixed competitions for E and C-cars and on the other hand E and C-only competitions. Maximum scores for single disciplines aren't the same everywhere (75 points for Skid Pad at FSG and FSA while only 50 at other competitions for example). In Australia there are two Endurance heats which makes it much easier to finish, but has some funny effect in fuel (we won fuel in 08 there but got not the full 50 points).

As it is nearly impossible to come up with a formula which takes all that into account I'd say that it doesn't make to much sense anymore to have the list at all.

I agree with Bob that the only reasons for the list are early registration at FSG and bragging. I really like Bob's suggestion to have early registration slots for top X positions from other competitions. And about bragging - at the moment people are only discussing what positions in the world ranking are worth, so they are still discussing who is the best in the world. That would also be possible if there wasn't a list at all http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif.

Please don't misunderstand me. I really appreciate the effort people put into this but for the mentioned reasons I don't see a way to keep the list going on in a way which makes really sense.

TMichaels

01-26-2012, 06:05 AM

Well,
I think there is a big misunderstanding here.
A kind of ranking list, no matter for what, can never be correct by all means.

If we look at the ATP ranking list for tennis or the points given in F1: Nobody will be able to prove the correctness of these scoring mechanisms. All former F1 Champions are champions by definition of the rules creators who decided how much points are assigned to the different placings.

So I do not think that discussing, if there is or can be a World Ranking List that is perfectly correct helps as I think perfection cannot be reached. As in designing a car, there are always trade offs.

Regarding Bob's proposal:
What principle should be used to decide how many slots are assigned to the respective competition?

JulianH

01-26-2012, 06:53 AM

What about the competitiveness factor?

If an event scores above 0.9, the Top 5 get a slot, if it's below 0.9, the Top 3 get a slot.

Something like that would be a good solution.

We just would have the situation that in Europe, the Top 5 of Silverstone, Austria and Italy would overlap surely with the Top 10 at FSG but I don't see a problem here.

Bemo

01-26-2012, 06:54 AM

But in F1 there is one big difference. Within one season all races follow the same rules and usually everybody takes part in every race.

The FS-world ranking list already takes into account that teams take part in 2-5 comps and that comps are differently competitive.

But with the mixed competitions there comes another factor which should be taken into account.

If you are a combustion team and your goal is to get into a top position in the world ranking you shouldn't take part in mixed competitions because it is a fact that you will get less points for the same performance.

I don't think any team will decide on which competitions to take part in based on that. But it shows the big problem of the world ranking in the current situation I think.

Kevin Hayward

01-26-2012, 08:32 AM

The world ranking may not give an accurate measure between who might be first and who might be 5th, but I do think it is a reasonable measure as to say the nearest 20 teams to your university. This goes beyond bragging rights, it can extend to a good KPI of your program, and help form your team strategies. Although being able to brag a bit certainly helps funding.

In the past the only competition that mattered was Michigan. The achievements as a team meant very little internationally until you had performed well in Detroit. With a world ranking it highlights the performance of teams outside of the large competitions. While we might argue the validity of various competitive factors it is great that the international F SAE/Student knows how well teams like Sophia maintain a high level of performance.

Ultimately a well supported and funded world championship would be a great goal, even if it is unlikely to be achieved.

I am frustrated with the differences between the points scoring at competition and the issue was officially raised in Australia. Our competition is improved by increasing international links between universities. Unfortunately the differences appear to have risen out of ideological reasons, almost completely ignoring international competition and the development of the teams into fully backed university programs.

The US is now not the only caretakers of the direction of the competition. The German rules have made some very good changes, mainly a better balance to the point score and the fuel efficiency, but appeared to make the changes without any regard to maintaining an international consensus. Australia's recent changes had good motivations, but horrible implementation and was universally disliked by the competing universities. There is definitely scope for local differences, but the fundamental rules defining the build of the cars and the points allocation and calculation of the points should be the same between competitions.

It is here that maintaining interest and value in the world ranking system keeps the pressure on to move the rules closer together. Breaking up the list into combustion and Electric also mirrors what I believe is the sentiment of most teams, that we see the electric / combustion as two different classes, that at this stage are not really comparable. Hopefully the absolute dogs breakfast of various alternative energy rule sets could be sorted out in the next few years as some sort of consensus of value to the students is found.

Kev

TMichaels

01-26-2012, 09:08 AM

But in F1 there is one big difference. Within one season all races follow the same rules and usually everybody takes part in every race.

That is not true http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif
The tracks are different favouring one or the other car concept like it is in FS with the difference in points assigned to the Dynamic Events. Also the rules in F1 are sometimes changed from race to race as it has been this year with the blown diffusor.

The world ranking may not give an accurate measure between who might be first and who might be 5th, but I do think it is a reasonable measure as to say the nearest 20 teams to your university.

Exactly. I recently compared the "season end ranking" in the WRL to the Top10 of the FSG and although the exact places did not match, the number of teams in the Top10 of the WRL (minus the teams which had a DNF in Endurance or were just not competing at FSG) matched the Top10 at FSG.

Hopefully the absolute dogs breakfast of various alternative energy rule sets could be sorted out in the next few years as some sort of consensus of value to the students is found.
We are currently working on integrating the electric rules set in the FSAE2013 rules. Therefore that should soon be fixed. A draft will be released in spring.

Bemo

01-29-2012, 04:22 AM

That is not true Smile
The tracks are different favouring one or the other car concept like it is in FS with the difference in points assigned to the Dynamic Events. Also the rules in F1 are sometimes changed from race to race as it has been this year with the blown diffusor.

Agreed - that's what usually is called "balance of performance" and is a bad thing if you ask me. It means, if one is too good for the others with the current rules, we change them to favor the others. I'm not sure if FSAE should go down this road.
But if E- and C-cars are merged to one class it is pretty much...

Kevin Hayward

01-29-2012, 09:04 PM

There does appear to be a problem with the world ranking calculation due to the normalising process and the recent switch to two lists. In the top 25 combustion cars there are some that did not compete at all in the last season:

UTA
TU Delft
DHBW Ravensburg
Oregon State University

In the case of the last two they did not compete as they combined into GFR, which means the same teams are mentioned twice in the top 25.

The most interesting case is UTA. Given the points scoring system if they do not compete again in the next season their score will go from 726.88 to 749.2 which by the current top 10 would put them up another 3 places into 7th place.

Obviously these teams will be cleared out of the list once they are past three seasons. In the meantime they represent a very glaring inaccuracy of competitiveness. I suggest that there needs to be something that penalises non-current teams. Possibly multiplying the final score by max(S)/6.

For current teams this would make no difference at all. For teams not competing the penalty would be ~17% the first season, 35% the second, and automatic exclusion by the third. If they return after one years absence they will lose the penalty. This means that teams with 2 year programs will only have a decent world ranking in the year they are competing.

Kev

TMichaels

01-30-2012, 02:52 AM

Hi Kevin,
we are aware of that problem and are currently looking into it. Your proposal seems to be interesting although it will lead to fluctuations.
If a team competes 2012 in Michigan and 2013 in Australasia, they will be penalized by your proposed calculation scheme in between Michigan 2013 and Australasia 2013.

Kevin Hayward

01-30-2012, 06:52 AM

Tobias,

I would imagine the situation you mention is quite rare. How many teams are in that situation in the top 25 where there are four examples of non-competing?

Maybe there could be a grace period setting the break between years. This could be a new years adjustment to the list. If a team hasn't competed in the last calender year the factor could be applied. I would make it a reasonable penalty to recognise the importance of regular competition.

I am pretty sure you will figure something out. Fundamentally I think the calculation is sound and wouldn't want it to become too complicated.

I would like teams to consider good world rankings a valid goal, while not considering non-competition a way to maintain a high ranking, or possibly improve it.

Kev

Jakob

09-02-2012, 04:18 AM

I hope the list will be updated soon!

TMichaels

09-03-2012, 03:55 AM

We are on it.

Jakob

09-03-2012, 06:39 AM

Originally posted by TMichaels:
We are on it.

Cool! http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

Jakob

09-12-2012, 01:37 PM

Can't wait anymore! http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif

Jakob

09-22-2012, 10:46 AM

Originally posted by TMichaels:
We are on it.
http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_confused.gif

.

Jakob

10-03-2012, 10:48 AM

http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_frown.gif

Owen Thomas

10-03-2012, 11:15 AM

Jakob,

If you're really that desperate, find out yourself! All the SAE sanctioned competition results are available online (I think?), and you can use the previous years' rank table as a template.

It may not apply directly, but the intent of the phrase "FBD that sh*t" comes to mind...

Jakob

10-03-2012, 01:26 PM

Originally posted by Owen Thomas:
Jakob,

If you're really that desperate, find out yourself! All the SAE sanctioned competition results are available online (I think?), and you can use the previous years' rank table as a template.

It may not apply directly, but the intent of the phrase "FBD that sh*t" comes to mind...

Yes, I'm really that desperated http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif
... or better: I'm really that curious how much my team improved this year.

Of course, I did the calulations by myself, but I'n not sure if they are right.

My many problems were the coefficients ("each of these aspects is being normalized" ?)

http://www.fs-world.org/

TMichaels

11-02-2012, 07:58 AM

Finally the WRL has been updated. The main problem was/is that some competitions only use team names and not school names. Additionally some do not mark which team is IC and which is EV and some publish results which are not text-based tables, but embedded pictures. All these factors heavily affect how fast we are able to import the data.

WRL Combustion (http://mazur-events.de/fs-world/?cl=1#)

WRL Electric (http://mazur-events.de/fs-world/?cl=2#)

M. Nader

11-02-2012, 03:04 PM

ranked 413 Internationally out of the 511 teams in our first competition year. Beat out the more experienced teams in Egypt (not much of an achievement but i will take it)

Cardriverx

11-03-2012, 12:16 AM

170... Well I suppose ill take it. Guess that just means we have to kick ass at Michigan this year http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif

Funky Luke

11-03-2012, 08:44 AM

Tobias - The Team name issue will be adressed (= fixed) at FSA 2013.
Also, if that would help you, we could send you a scoring spreadsheet that you can easily extract the data out of. Just let me know which format would be the most convenient for you.

TMichaels

11-03-2012, 09:20 AM

Luke,
thanks for the offer, we will get back to you 2013 as we already imported the data for 2012 http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

Funky Luke

11-03-2012, 09:55 AM

Tobias,
that was actually meant for 2013 ;-)
I think I will just mail you after the event...

Edward M. Kasprzak

11-05-2012, 09:01 AM

At the risk of starting a discussion on what the world ranking formula should or shouldn't include, I'd like to point out that this ranking scheme believes the old adage "you're only as good as your last race".

A quick look through the rankings brings a few cases to light:
+ GFR won four of the five events it entered since July 2011, but failing to complete endurance at FSG 2012 (the most recent event) leaves them 30th in the combustion rankings.
+ Texas A&M has competed in one event since 2008, finishing 5th at Lincoln this year, and is 5th in the combustion rankings.
+ Top-ranked Stuttgart has an impressive list of finishes, but all it will take is one failure to finish endurance and they will fall out of the top 20 again. It happened to them in 2010 after winning 5 straight events.

My opinion is that this system should be weighted less-heavily on the most recent event, but then again it's not my ranking system. Any debate on the ranking formula will come down to personal preferences. I would, however, like to encourage students to look a little more deeply than just their ranking position to see how they were ranked where they are.

Note to Tobias: I can appreciate the work that goes into compiling all these results. It isn't easy, and there will never be consensus on the ranking formula--a thankless task! Still, a "world ranking" is a nice contribution to the global Formula community.

TMichaels

11-05-2012, 09:28 AM

Edward,
we are always happy to discuss our approach open-minded. As you said, getting the data is the most demanding task. Calculating the results is done by the server http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

I see what you are talking about. The formulas we use are documented on our landing page and, as said above, I am happy to discuss, if another approach reflects the actual ranking better. It will however always stay a world ranking by definition which does or does not reflect the personal preferences of the person looking at it.

For example right now we have to deal with a special artefact:
Teams that have changed entirely to electric from IC and do not clock in any more results rise in the WRL, if their last results were good. This currently happens to Zwickau for example. I do not say that they don't deserve it. They had a strong combustion team! But they still rise, because their last results were strong. The same will happen with Delft. They will conquer the top ranking after FSUK2013. That is for sure!

So how to deal with it? Any input is appreciated!

Edward M. Kasprzak

11-05-2012, 12:57 PM

Tobias,

I like the overall structure of the ranking formula. I think it does a lot of things "right". For example, limiting to three years or six events, whichever comes first, is very reasonable. Attempts to correct for the strength of competition are also reasonable.

But, as noted earlier, I think it weights too heavily on the last event. I think the "season" weight is a great concept, but I think the "actuality" weight is too severe. It is currently based on powers of 0.6.

Right now if a team does three events per season their ranking is weighted (normalized S*A) as follows, with the most recent event first:

43.2%, 25.9%, 15.6%, 7.8%, 4.7%, 2.8%

If you base the "A" on powers of 0.8 instead of 0.6 it becomes:

28.7%, 23.0%, 18.4%, 12.3%, 9.8%, 7.8%

And if you go to 0.9:

23.0%, 20.7%, 18.6%, 13.9%, 12.6%, 11.3%

Assuming I've understood the formula and done the calculations correctly I propose basing the acuality on 0.8 or 0.9 instead of 0.6. I think these are more representative weightings for the most active teams, and I don't see a downside for teams that do one competition a year. The "season" factor weights those.

Speaking of which, a somewhat larger gap between seasons, such as (6,4,3) instead of the current (6,5,4), could be useful, but this isn't as large an issue for me.

My last suggestion is to always count one event per year. Thus, an IC team that scored in '10 and '11 but went electric in '12 would be credited with "0" for one event in '12 in the combustion rankings. A new team in '12 would have "0" for the '10 and '11 years. It would take a few years to work up (or down) the rankings, but that's okay--the ranking metric should be relatively stable and catch longer term trends, not the most recent way the wind is blowing.

Sure, counting one event a year still doesn't properly acknowledge a strong IC team that became a strong electric team, but it will eliminate the anomalies like you described with Delft or as I noted with Texas A&M. Nothing against the fine folks at A&M, but one 5th place finish in your only event of the last 5 years shouldn't put you in the top 10 of the world rankings.

Thoughts?

Kevin Hayward

11-05-2012, 07:33 PM

On this very thread we had Bob commenting that the formula overly rewarded reliability with Japan as an example. I think switching the actuality modifier to another number will make this worse.

GFR's event score that brought them way down was 380. That is much worse than not just finishing endurance. I would say the drop in rankings in this case is well and truly justified. If we are looking for the current top 10 teams in the world (or even top 25) out of 500 teams I would sassume that any team that had such a bad score would not be in that list. The effect of this finish will quickly be reduced if they can follow it up with some good placings. In this way the actuality modifier works as intended.

I think the problems with the scoring system occur with slightly skewed competiveness factors for the smaller comps. The competitiveness factor for Australia is definitely too low. By looking at the top 10 teams in an Australian comp you go halfway through the competitor list. But no-one past the top 5-6 teams will have any influence on tmin etc. Out of this comp you have had 3 world champions and a team that is currently 2nd. On the flip side the Japanese comp seems overly rewarded for reliability and has yet to produce a world beater.

The biggest problem is for teams that have not had recent results. We have also discussed this on this post, with some discussion of potential solutions.

So I would suggest leaving actuality where it is, but find a way to deal with the irregularly comepeting teams, or teams that are no longer competing with an additional modifier. One that requires 3 years of competition for calculation would take car of both. In no way should a last competition result of 2010 put a team high in the current world rankings.

Tobias,

Great to see the rankings updated. I think it is a great initiative and one that takes a lot of effort with a lot of backlash.

Kev

TMichaels

11-06-2012, 02:05 AM

I think this is a good discussion going on here!
Don't you think that teams on a two year cycle would feel that they are treated unfair, if we for example say that a 0 points event will be recorded, if they did not compete within a season (season as defined by our current formula)?

@Kev:
What defines a World Champion in FS/FSAE? Certainly not the fact that the Fisita World Championship was rewarded. I know that the teams that won it claim to be World Champions and it is their right as they won this award. However, all of us know: It is just an award and must not necessarily reflect the real world. It has nevertheless always been awarded to very strong teams.

Regarding the comp factor:
This basically results from isolated events and can hardly be changed. Japan and Australasia are quite isolated with respect to teams taking part in other events internationally. Of course they are facing higher borders as they are also geographically isolated.
I also compared the average points spread of FSAE-A(180), FSAE-MI(69), FSG(90) and FSUK(103) from 2011 to 2009 (as there is no data for the FSAE-A2012 event yet) between the 1st and 3rd placed team. As you can see, this is quite different.
Now what does that tell us? Either the winner of FSAE_A is usually way over the top or the rest of the field is not as competitive as at the other events.
In other words, if more teams at FSAE-A score more points then the entire competition will climb up with respect to the competitiveness factor. That seems right to me as more teams scoring more points results in a more competitive event.

Kevin Hayward

11-06-2012, 03:33 AM

Tobias,

I would suggest that a world champion is either a team that one Detroit prior to the rise of the European and FSAE West comps. At this time it was well accepted that to win there was to be the best in that year. From then on any team that has taken number one in the world rankings should be considered the current world champion.

It is under this basis that I would say there have been 3 Australian world champions (maybe a poor choice of words). Certainly not on the basis of winning the Fisita Award.

As for the competitiveness factor I don't think that Australia should be at 0.96, but it should probably still be higher than it is. I think it is a bit crazy to think that the 10th place team in Australia will have an effect on competitiveness. The gap being large supports this notion. At any given Australian comps there are maybe 5-6 teams in it for the win. Out of these teams it is difficult for an international team to come in and score high. Stuttgart's win in 2008 was probably a low point for Australian team competitiveness. UWA was on a decline, Monash was starting its rise, and previously very competitive teams such as Woolongong and RMIT were in a funk.

But by the time you get to the 10th team in Australia you are looking at teams that didn't finish endurance (for most comps) I would suggest for smaller comps that the average of the comps top 5 or 6 cars should determine the competitiveness. This might even extend to the larger comps. Only the top teams in each event will have an impact on how many points are on offer. Alternatively maybe the competitiveness factor should be based on the top x% of teams. Compare say the average of the top 25% of teams in the comp versus the average of the current world top 10.

An interesting question would be how far do you have to go down a list before you find that the teams no longer affect dynamic event results for other teams?

The competitiveness factor is a difficult one to manage given the isolated competitions, and is largely not an issue I worry about too much. It is better to have a world ranking that may cause a few minor arguments than not having one at all.

Kev

TMichaels

11-06-2012, 03:58 AM

Kev,
ok, sorry, I misunderstood your comment regarding the World Championship. I don't think that we really need that term. Even if we would use the WRL to determine this, at which point will it be valid? Given that the season plans/schedule of teams is different based on what they determine to be their first event, we are not able to set a hard limit and thus we would have a new World Champion after each event.

I agree that maybe only 5-6 teams are able to set Tmin for a dynamic event, but we are currently only talking about dynamics. For Presentation or Cost basically every team is in for the win and may therefore set the standard. So they will influence the overall points to be scored. It may be of minor influence, but it has an effect.

Regarding taking only a percentage into account:
I think this becomes difficult. Think of an event were maybe only 3 teams determine the competitiveness, because only 15 teams take part. Now all these three teams fail to finish Endurance, which is not impossible. Then you could get an artifact where a comparable weak team gains many points which will not be corrected for the WRL, because C=1. The chance of that happening decreases with the number of teams taken into account to calculate competitiveness.

That makes me think whether the C-factor should be corrected by only taking teams into account that finish Endurance. Hmmm, difficult...on average it should not make a difference, it will just scale down.

I still like the idea of assigning 0 points for a season in which a team did not participate in any event. It will solve the biggest problem.

Kevin Hayward

11-06-2012, 04:50 AM

Tobias,

I deliberately left out the cost and presentation events as you cannot be sure you catch the influential teams in any comp just taking the top 10.

I completely agree with the numbers getting too small for the small comps with a percentage basis. Assuming a 30% finish rate for all teams the likelihood of the top x teams all failing to finish is:

x - %
1 - 70%
2 - 49%
3 - 34%
4 - 24%
5 - 17%
6 - 12%
7 - 8%
8 - 6%
9 - 4%
10 - 3%

It is a bit of a simplification as the better ranked teams are partly better ranked due to reliability. I would suggest that the top ranked teams have a finishing rate far in excess of 50%. At 50% reliability you have less than a 2% chance that all of the top 6 teams will not finish. Furthermore a top team that fails to finish usually fails in endurance and will still have a marked effect on the point scores for the other dynamic events. This would support the idea that for small comps less than 10 teams could be considered while still providing a reasonably accurate C scale.

One of the best indicators for the balance for the competitiveness of Australia in the last few years has been Monash. Looking at the last international comp with the same car

Oz 2011 - 864 points (C = 0.87) P*C = 752
UK 2012 - 841 points (C = 0.95) P*C = 799
Germany 2012 - 841 points (C = 0.98) P*C = 824

I'm all behind the idea that a place at Germany is likely to be harder than a win in Australia, but 70 points seems pretty extreme. We see what happens to the regular Japanese visitors to Australia, yet the Japanese comp has a high C value and the Australian one has a low one.

Maybe it should be something like:

Number of teams considered = max(25% comp, 10)

That way the Oz (and small comps) C factor stays the same, but other bigger comps will reduce a little. Larger comps still have an advantage.

Alternatively maybe the C value should be much simpler and based on numbers alone. A comp of over 100 teams has a C of 1. Comps of 50-100 have 0.975. Comps with less than 50 have 0.95 Comps with less than 20 have 0.9. Or something similar.

I definitely back a zero points for a non-competed season. While it is harsh in a few cases I think the world ranking should favour regular competitors. What seems a little odd is that we looked at the world rankings for ECU this year. Our best strategy to improve the teams world ranking is not to compete this year (or next). Given that the team has had continuous improvements in score the WRP will rise due to non-competition. The team would move into the top 20 by the start of 2014.

I think everyone would agree that no team should be able to improve their world ranking by not competing.

Kev

Bemo

11-06-2012, 04:58 AM

The Japanese competition is definitely rated too high at the moment due to its isolation.

The problem with lists like yours is (in my opinion) that it is hard to tell how much Monash improved their car from Australia 11 to FSG 12. There was quite some time for testing and uprading the car.

Unfortunately at the moment the Australian comp isn't very competitive. Monash seems to be the only team able to reach a Top10 place at the major events. UWA, RMIT and Wollongong are for whatever reason way behind their past performances.

TMichaels

11-06-2012, 05:33 AM

We are looking into the isolation problem for a long time now, but have not figured out a fair way to address it.

The perfect solution would be to have the Top10 finishers of each event attend one single event and then you would have a) a real world championship and b) a good way to determine competitiveness of the events.
Sadly this will probably not happen in the near future.

Something which I tend to forget is that competitiveness discussion is often based on feelings rather than numbers. Maybe, because it is hard to acquire numbers which can be trusted.

I am truly against basing the comp-factor on number of teams. Otherwise an Indian, Chinese or Brazilian event will probably be ranked way outside their league. No offense , it is just a fact. It would also be prone to many artefacts, such as a 50 teams event with the entire Top50 of the WRL getting the same comp factor as a 50 teams event with the Last50 of the WRL. That does not work in my opinion.

I fully agree that a team should not be rewarded for not competing, as it currently is the case.
Daniel (who is putting all of the work into collecting the data and implementing the calculations etc.) and I are currently discussing to implement the 0 score to be able to see how it practically affects the scores.
Daniel also acted on a feature request of mine and the result of the respective event will be shown in the future next to the WRL. That means that all results since the start of FSAE will be available for everyone in a single place.

I know that judgement should not be based on single events, but Swinburne reached the second place at FSAE-A2010 and came in 4th at FSAE-JP2011 with the same car/team as far as I know. Thus it seems to be right that FSAE-JP has a higher comp factor than FSAE-A for example.

TMichaels

11-06-2012, 06:00 AM

Daniel just told/showed me that the event results are now online as well. They are displayed on the right side of the WRL. Please note the Mouse-Over function which shows you the scores and whether the team is electric or combustion.

JulianH

11-06-2012, 08:17 AM

It's really difficult to define "very good" at Formula Student.

Different teams have different approaches. GFR is running to win. Basically, they have won a lot of events when they finished in a row (FSA 2012, Michigan 2012, FSG 2011, FSA 2011, Michigan 2011...)

Ann Arbor for example didn't win big competitions in the last years but always scored high.

I think it is impossible to say, which team is "better".

On the one hand, the GFR combustion car (and also their static performance!) is one of the best AutoX/Endurance car of all time but it fails also quiet often. Ann Arbor is always fast but never "the" fastest car...

Another point to discuss is the difference between pure Electric / pure combustion events and mixed events.
With an eCar you lose in Endurance and in Cost against Combustion cars, but they lose at Accel and probably AutoX.

This should be weighted in the scoring.

Another point about the competitiveness (especially for the eCars).

In Spain 2012, we had Karlsruhe, Stuttgart and Zurich, 3 of the 5 fastest eCars of the year. And still the event got only 0.85 competitive ness because the 10th placed team was Hannover with 142 points!

Italy, that only got Freiberg as one of the Top 7 of FSG (which is basically the Electric World Championship...) had the same scoring. (Of course, Zwickau should be placed way higher but they had a rough German event...).

I think for the small "Top-List" of eCars, it would be better only to look at the Top5 cars or so.

But all in all, I don't think it is possible to assign a World Ranking for Formula Student. With this said, I don't think that it is a good idea to promote these times with early registrations slots or so.

Regards,

Julian

TMichaels

11-06-2012, 09:40 AM

Julian,
it is a different discussion whether the WRL reflects the actual performance. It is, as said before in this thread by me, a ranking by definition. As is the ATP ranking list or the Formula1 Championship. Just tweak the point distribution a bit in F1 and you will have different World Champions. Thus the F1 World Champion does also not say, who is the best driver or team. It only tells you who won the World Championship by the definition of the FIA.

This is the same that we do. We create a ranking by definition.

Now we are discussing how to make this ranking more accurate, though we all know that it can never be perfect/suit everyones preferences.

JulianH

11-06-2012, 12:39 PM

Tobias,

I think we all agree on this point, that it should be more accurate and so on. My point simply was, that in contrast to Tennis, you can't point the finger on the good and on the bad player/team.

In my example, GFR would kinda represent Rafael Nadal (won a looot of major tournaments but is out for injuries for a long time). In the ranking he is still ranked Fourth or so without a "running car/running legs".

Therefore I would argue that a "one time DNF" shouldn't be weighted that extreme.

Additionally, my input was to acknowledge that the Top Class for the Electrics is way smaller than in the Combustion Class.

We had 16 Combustion cars in a reach of 5 seconds at FSG in Autocross and only 4 in the Electric class.

Therefore a change in the "number of teams to decide how competitive the event was" would be a good starting point.

Kevin Hayward

11-06-2012, 06:12 PM

Tobias,

Excellent points once again especially with respect to the number of teams affecting the C value. Swinbourne in Japan is an odd example. There performance in Australia was affected reasonably heavily by their excellent drivers (One of which is running in professional motorsport now). Those drivers were not at Japan. Despite this their comp score was virtually identical for both competitions.

Japan: P = 754 C = 0.95 P*C = 716
Australia: P = 759 C = 0.89 P*C = 675

If we look at another swap in Sophia for the same car (A team Swinbourne beat in Australia):

Japan: P = 830 C = 0.92 P*C = 761
Australia: P = 703 C = 0.89 P*C = 627

The first example gives Japan a 41 PC advantage for the same car, the second a 134 PC advantage. In the Japanese comps from 2009 to 2011 Sophia scored above 800 points (average 861) in a comp with a C rating of over 0.9 (average 0.93). Yet the one time they have traveled (to Australia) the only scored 703 points. There are plenty more examples of this disparity in the 2011 Australian comp. I accept that a world ranking cant get bogged down in exceptions, but this seems like the C factor is the dominant term in the equation for teams in remote competitions.

Bemo,

The Oz comp is not as one-teamed as it may look from the surface. Monash has been a truly great team in the last few years. Their cars have gotten better over the last few years, but despite better and faster cars each year their comp scores have been decreasing. This is a side effect of stronger competition. Interesting to note that in your list of Oz teams that you didn't mention the Australian teams currently ranked 2nd or 3rd in the comp.

I would also add that an Australian team travelling to Europe (or America) basically means very little testing and development and a logistics nightmare. It is nowhere near the same as a European team going to the UK. Some teams experience this when travelling to a remote competition. While the Monash car may have been improved between Australia and Europe it is unlikely that it would have been by much.

...

One idea might be to raise the minimum C value. The C value is based on a top team being able to score 1000 points at a poorly competing competition at which the minimum C would reduce the teams score to 850 (the average winning score). Even in a poor comp there has been no case of a team being able to score 1000 points. Given the top score ever achieved is around 960 it might be reasonable to change the minimum C to 0.89 to 0.9.

At the moment it seems that the C factor is too great an influence on the world rankings.

I think that a good long term solution would be a true world championship event that is well supported. I don't think it is out of the question that such an event could be created and supported. Individual organisations for the comps could retain prize money (or other sponsorship) for the sole purpose of paying for transport of placing teams to a world event. Maybe this is the next step for FS, and would provide the best comparison of competitiveness of different events.

Kev

Markus

11-06-2012, 11:15 PM

An idea about old teams on world ranking list:

The world ranking list could employ an "old team list" which would either be a seperate list or maybe better it would show the teams position on the world ranking list without a placement i.e. Delft would be on the list where its score puts it but the rank number 13 would go to Wisconsin-Madison who's next.

The teams could be in a different text color to show their change or there could be a checkbox for show/noshow. You could either freeze their last WRL score for this rank to show their last performance or use an all time average to show all time performance (I think latter might be a bit unfair).

Teams could be put on this list after 2 years of not competing. Not competing for a year usually keeps your place on the list quite fairly.

Another option is to combine electric and combustion lists. Competitiviness factor should equal the events somewhat. Because honestly being in the top 5 in electric seams easier at the moment than top 5 in combustion. I don't see this as impossible, it would just mean the teams attending both in FSG would score from both events. Which should equal out.

Kevin: I don't see a world championship event that practical and in my opinion the point of this competition is not to find a World Champion of any kind.

You want a championship? Let's make a series where you have to attend all the competitions in the world and the points are put together. Who cares logistic is a nightmare from Europe to States to Australia to Brazil to Japan?

We are students. We have money. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif

Kevin Hayward

11-06-2012, 11:59 PM

Markus,

I agree that the point of this competition is not to find a world champion. However we could have a world championship event without reducing the already great outcomes of FS. I see this world ranking list and a potential world championship event being positive for the following reasons:

- Students as individuals are encouraged to look beyond their own country
- Engineering connections are developed between countries aiding in developing a truly global workforce
- It helps (in a small way) future engineers consider engineering excellence based on global rather than local standards
- Engineering excellence is rewarded

The original point of FSAE has long since matured into something far beyond its initial creation. Will this comp still exist in 10 years and what will it look like then?

A global FS event where only the best are invited (and funded) to attend would be absolutely fantastic. The World Cup of FSAE. I have always enjoyed the race of champions, but would prefer it if the cars were engineered by their nations http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

It is an often held complaint that engineering is not a well recognised and understood profession. I'm not surprised. We have politics, arts, law, defence industries etc. celebrated regularly, but when large groups of engineers get together to do cool things we hide it away. We complain that racing has become less about the cars and teams, and more about the drivers, yet we don't go to any length to show how interesting vehicle design and manufacture is.

Is it practical to run one next year? I doubt it. But if you had got the founders of mini-indy in 1979 and told them that in 33 years their concept would grow from the original 13 registered teams in a single comp to over 500 teams competing in 11 competitions around the world. That teams would design and build their own engines and dampers, develop innovative composite techniques, engage with industry worldwide, cars would be in windtunnels, on shaker rigs, hooked up with professional DAQ systems, have amazing custom electronics, teams would join forces over the Atlantic, Electric and hybrid competitions would be spun off etc.

I think they would have laughed and called you an impractical dreamer.

When I started FSAE we were thinking of a day when International teams could compete with the US and take the title. Now it seems that the best of the world meet in Germany for a competition that is televised over the internet worldwide.

Things can and will change.

Kev

BeunMan

11-07-2012, 01:03 AM

To add some fuel to the debate of scoring:

After two years of not building a combustion car, the TU Delft combustion team is still 15th. Lets see how we stand after FSUK 2013, since only FSG2010 will count at that point and we wont that one http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif.

In my oppinion the score is the best of the lesser of evils. While it does underscore for some events (e.g. 3-4 top teams and low scoring 8-10th place), this should only get 0.85 competitaveness! With lots of competition the scores are generally somewhat lower (around 840-860 top3 vs 910-930 top3). While this is not always the case, a close competition might put some cars a bit lower in certain rankings which they would otherwise have scored at the top with less competition (see skidpad for FSE2012 for instance). This lowers the top scores a bit but increases the competativeness if more teams score on average higher scores which compensates for the lower score compared to other possible outcomes.

Bemo

11-07-2012, 01:28 AM

Originally posted by Kevin Hayward:
I would also add that an Australian team travelling to Europe (or America) basically means very little testing and development and a logistics nightmare. It is nowhere near the same as a European team going to the UK. Some teams experience this when travelling to a remote competition. While the Monash car may have been improved between Australia and Europe it is unlikely that it would have been by much.

I know what such a trip means, I've been a member of the Stuttgart team when we came to the Australian competition in 08. Of course I can't know what the Monash guys did between the Australian comp 11 and their European tour 12, but there was definitely plenty of time to go testing and upgrading the car. There are quite a lot of examples of European teams going to Michigan with a heavily updated version of their car. All I want to say is, that it is always very hard to compare the results of a team if there is half a year between comps as it doesn't need to be the same car anymore.

As I already said, I'm definitely agreeing that the Japanese competition is rated way to high as they have a couple of teams who finished Endurance for several years in row and always scored high. There isn't much you can do about this as long as the competition is so isolated. It would be necessary that some of the world's top teams attend there to decrease the points of the Japanese teams and therefor lower the competitiveness factor.

Another point I want to add is the example of GFR's DNF at FSG and the impact it had on their ranking. They didn't just have a DNF. They had a very tough competition from the beginning (not reaching design finals, penalty for late submission of IAD...). In the end the had less then 400 points.
When we didn't finish Endurance at FSG 08 we still had and didn't drop that far in the world ranking (I think we fell from 1st to 6th or something like that).

As Tobias said, it is a ranking by definition, if you change the scoring system in one direction or the other, placings will change. There will always be problems if unusual things happen. In 2011 we dropped from 1st to 2nd by winning FS UK. The problem was that we and the other fastest teams had to run Endurance in very heavy rain and in the afternoon some teams were able to run in dry conditions which led to a high point loss for all top teams in Endurance. We won the event with less than 760 points or something like this. You will always have these problems.

At the moment I really think, that the C-factor of the Japanese competition is the biggest issue of the whole world ranking. Unfortunatly I don't have any idea how to solve that problem.

Markus

11-07-2012, 03:39 AM

Bemo:

Stuttgart won 2011 Silverstone because of running in a dry slot as other fast teams ran in the rain, not the other way around.

Stuttgart won with 872 points and a gap of 100 points to next team - mainly because of the above mentioned reason.

Some teams were also quite affected by organizer's problems with autocross, which also dropped us from the top competion.

So that is a rather bad example of World Ranking acting up.

TMichaels

11-07-2012, 05:47 AM

Originally posted by JulianH:
Additionally, my input was to acknowledge that the Top Class for the Electrics is way smaller than in the Combustion Class.

We had 16 Combustion cars in a reach of 5 seconds at FSG in Autocross and only 4 in the Electric class.

Therefore a change in the "number of teams to decide how competitive the event was" would be a good starting point.

That is a good point! I will do some calculations on that matter.

TMichaels

11-07-2012, 06:06 AM

Originally posted by Kevin Hayward:
One idea might be to raise the minimum C value. The C value is based on a top team being able to score 1000 points at a poorly competing competition at which the minimum C would reduce the teams score to 850 (the average winning score). Even in a poor comp there has been no case of a team being able to score 1000 points. Given the top score ever achieved is around 960 it might be reasonable to change the minimum C to 0.89 to 0.9.

At the moment it seems that the C factor is too great an influence on the world rankings.

That would put Spain, Brazil, Australasia and Italy on the same level with respect to competitiveness. Do you feel that this is right? I don't, to be honest.
Also, even if 1000Pts have never been achieved, the C-factor just scales down the scores linearly, therefore it should still be correct. Capping always introduces non-linearity which practically implies that no event can ever be worse than 0.9 . As shown above, I don't think this is true.

TMichaels

11-07-2012, 06:10 AM

Originally posted by Bemo:
At the moment I really think, that the C-factor of the Japanese competition is the biggest issue of the whole world ranking. Unfortunatly I don't have any idea how to solve that problem.

We thought about introducing something like an internationality factor to solve this. But this would harm other events as well, such as Brazil or Australasia, which are also very isolated. Additionally it is quite easy for an European event to be very international, but not for events in Japan or Australia. So, if we would introduce this, it would probably be seen as unfair treatment of the event.
And, as said some posts before: This is a feeling. I honestly don't know, if the c-factor of the Japanese event is not well-deserved. Maybe it is, we never know until either some Japanese teams participate in other events or some teams from other events go to Japan to compete.

TMichaels

11-07-2012, 06:16 AM

Something that I do from time to time is, to check how the Top10 of the WRL at an event place in the event. Almost all the time it matches. Not the exact places, but you can predict that a team which has been in the Top10 (only considering teams participating at the event) before the event will place in the Top10 at that event, if they manage to finish Endurance. So in the end, we cannot be too far off, I think.

Many of you will of course say: I don't need the WRL to predict who will be in the Top10 and I certainly agree to that. But it shows, that the current way of calculating it is not totally implausible.

We just need to fix the "small" issues http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_cool.gif

RenM

11-07-2012, 01:59 PM

Originally posted by Bemo:
In 2011 we dropped from 1st to 2nd by winning FS UK. The problem was that we and the other fastest teams had to run Endurance in very heavy rain and in the afternoon some teams were able to run in dry conditions which led to a high point loss for all top teams in Endurance. We won the event with less than 760 points or something like this. You will always have these problems.

you mean 2009 http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif

Bemo

11-08-2012, 01:24 AM

Originally posted by Markus:
Bemo:

Stuttgart won 2011 Silverstone because of running in a dry slot as other fast teams ran in the rain, not the other way around.

Stuttgart won with 872 points and a gap of 100 points to next team - mainly because of the above mentioned reason.

Some teams were also quite affected by organizer's problems with autocross, which also dropped us from the top competion.

So that is a rather bad example of World Ranking acting up.
Sorry, that was a typo. I was talking about 2009.

TMichaels

11-08-2012, 02:04 AM

Guys,
I think this is a singular case and we should not try to catch these. Otherwise we could end up with formulas, definitions and exceptions that are very hard to understand, especially how they influence each other.

The concept of the WRL is to reflect which average score a team is theoretically capable of reaching. Although I agree that this event was not representative. But that happens from time to time in statistics and that is why we include several competitions/years in the WRL score calculation.

Bemo

11-08-2012, 03:50 AM

Maybe I wasn't clear what I wanted to say Tobias. I wanted to show with our case from UK 09 that there will always be special situations which will lead to undesired effects in the world ranking.
I'm also not a fan of over-complicating it all. It is very hard to set up such a ranking in a world like FSAE, where you have competitions with very different numbers of entering teams and no teams who can attend all competitions.

In regular motorsports like F1 you have the big advantage that in every race you have the same teams and the same number of cars (if nothing special happens). And they are all racing at the same time. If it rains during a race, all teams are affected and in the end the winner will not fall in the ranking.

I'm definitely agreeing the the WRL for FSAE as it is now is a very good approach to handle these problems. I wouldn't suggest major changes in the formula. Of course you can always discuss like how much the actuality of a competition should be weighed. But as Tobias already said, that is just sort of definition and personal preference.

If I'm correct the original intend of the WRL was to give the world's top team garanteed registration slots at FSG. If a team is within the Top 10 of this list, they definitely did a good job in the past and deserve their early registration slot. And if you're not in the Top10 you can still attend by performing well in the registration quiz.

Besides that the major point of such a list is, to determine who got the biggest balls http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif

TMichaels

11-08-2012, 04:08 AM

If I'm correct the original intend of the WRL was to give the world's top team garanteed registration slots at FSG. If a team is within the Top 10 of this list, they definitely did a good job in the past and deserve their early registration slot. And if you're not in the Top10 you can still attend by performing well in the registration quiz.

Besides that the major point of such a list is, to determine who got the biggest balls

Indeed, we needed a way to find out who should get these slots and not base it on pure gut feeling.
The outcome is that teams may use it to show their sponsors how much they improved compared to last year. Especially teams in the midfield do this. And of course it is great for bragging... http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

RobbyObby

11-08-2012, 01:56 PM

Just to throw my hat in the ring...

I've always been a little wary of the accuracy of the WRL, although I understand all of its benefits. The fact that it is purely based on raw competition points is where I see its flaw. This exposes cases, like what Bemo mentioned, where even though the competitiveness of an event might be high, the top points scorers score less points than they could have theoretically scored due to outside influences (weather being a key one). Is a team who wins one year with 900 points considered better than a team who wins the following year with 800 points? Maybe, but not necessarily, because many of the points formulas base their scales off the performance of other cars, instead of a raw linear scale. So the team who wins a competition with 800 points may actually be the better team, since they may have had tougher competition that were taking away alot of the major points gains in each event.

A solution?? I think basing a teams event score in the WRL on event competitiveness is a great idea, but I think calculating it based on a teams overall placing in the event would be a better quantifier. That way a team that wins a competition gains the same in the WRL no matter the total number of points scored (adjusting for competitiveness of course). This could potentially reward teams that stay consistent, but might not be good enough to win a competition, and hurt teams that always have a fast competitive car but can't seem to find consistency (like DNFing endurance for instance).

Lastly, a suggestion that would be cool to see is being able to sort the World Ranking List. I don't know how feasible this is with the software currently running the list though. It would nice to, say, sort the List based on teams from the US, or only teams who competed within the last year (or vise versa, only teams who have competed consistently for the past X years).
But again, just a suggestion.

Edward M. Kasprzak

11-09-2012, 06:26 AM

I don't have anything to add on the competitiveness metric, but its nice to see such a good discussion.

For those that pointed-out that GFR's most recent result was more than just not finishing endurance: I agree.

Going back to the actuality factor, my point of concern is this: If a team competes in three events in, say, June, July and August of the same year then the August result will count almost three times as much as the June result. Given that the car is the product of the same group of students and the car itself is (mostly) the same I think this in-season weighting is too strong.

Of course, this is a preference, and it could just as easily be argued that the effect of time and participation in multiple events really can justify a threefold increase in weighting within the same season. My opinion differs, as I give more value to a year's effort as a whole. An A based on 0.8 instead of 0.6 would better represent my preferences. This would weight the August event about 1.5 times as much as the June event, which I think is enough to capture in-season learning, experience, testing and development effects.

TMichaels

11-09-2012, 07:05 AM

A solution?? I think basing a teams event score in the WRL on event competitiveness is a great idea, but I think calculating it based on a teams overall placing in the event would be a better quantifier. That way a team that wins a competition gains the same in the WRL no matter the total number of points scored (adjusting for competitiveness of course). This could potentially reward teams that stay consistent, but might not be good enough to win a competition, and hurt teams that always have a fast competitive car but can't seem to find consistency (like DNFing endurance for instance).

Rob,
interesting suggestion. How would the points be determined that the respective team gets assigned? Will it be like in Formula 1? So give 25 pts. for 1st place, 18pts for second place etc? How will that change, if a different amount of teams take part? So for example how should the points look like for an 80 teams event and an 30 teams event?

I think that has to be taken into account, otherwise quite some teams will pile up at the bottom, because they steadily finish outside the point ranks.

AxelRipper

11-09-2012, 07:48 AM

Well if you win at 800 points rather than 900, that means that those 100 points were taken up somewhere else by another team, correct? Possibly some sort of metric based on distribution of points at the competition to normalize the number of points earned at the competition?

TMichaels

11-09-2012, 08:25 AM

It could just be scaled to 1000Pts. So that the winner would always get 1000Pts * C-Factor.

We would lose the fact that now, theoretically, the WRL shows the average points scored, if a team takes part in an event with a C-Factor of 1.

Jakob

11-09-2012, 11:01 AM

This could potentially reward teams that stay consistent, ...

But when you reward constistents, than you penalize teams which made big progress.

When a team ist working hard, why should de be penalized?

Isn't improving more difficult than staying constistents (good or bad)?

TMichaels

11-09-2012, 11:13 AM

The challenge is to improve and then stay consistent. Otherwise you would also reward rollercoaster performance.

Kevin Hayward

11-09-2012, 08:47 PM

I'm not sure I like the words reward or punish in this context. The world ranking lets you see your performance relative to other teams. If your world ranking drops it means that you have not performed as well as other teams. This is not a punishment it is just a statement.

I like the basic formula. Even for the fact that it favours teams that are able to travel to many local comps (i.e. European teams). However we should assess whether the factors applied are based in reality. This should be a mixture of the objective (what are the statistics of the comps telling us) and the subjective (do we believe that a top team is one who wins regularly, but occasionally doesn't finish, or one that consistently scores highly, but may not win).

Tobias,

The winning scores for the last season (according to the ranking site) are as follows:

Michigan - 925
Lincoln - 862
Australia - 864
UK - 850
Germany - 880
Japan - 898
Italy - 892
Spain - 949
Hungary - 863
Austria - 843
Brazil - 916

From this we see that with the exception of Austria (and UK) all comps were won with a score of over 850 points. Just taking an average of the events (which really should be weighted by number of competitors) we get an average winning score of around 880. This is the point score that a 1000 point score would be changed to for a comp with a minimum C factor.

I would suggest that the minimum C value needs to be increased. Unless I am missing something comps are very rarely won by 850 points or less. Adding in the fact that a true measure of top available points to is probably closer to 970 if we then wanted to reduce this to a more realistic high winning score it would indicate that a minimum C score should be in the region of 0.88-0.91.

The problem with the C factor is that not only does it have a big influence on the scores it is also very hard to shift one way or another as we see with Japan and Australia. Given that comps largely have the same competitors (especially remote competitions) if there is a low C value then all the teams get low corrected scores, which in turn maintains a low C value. Conversely if a comp has a high C value then all the teams get higher corrected scores and the next year the C factor remains high. The only thing that affects this for remote competitions is reliability.

For large comps with lots of international teams the C factor is a good measure of relative competitiveness. For remote / smaller comps it is a measure of the reliability of the teams in the competition. This explains both the Japan and Australia C factors clearly. Japanese teams tend to produce reliable cars that are not world winners, Australia has teams that produce world competitive pace, but are not as reliable. Which will be the harder comp for a top team to win high points in?

With a strong emphasis on reliability already in the scoring method I think this is a bit of a problem. I don't know the best way to fix it, but I would suggest reducing its effect primarily by reducing the range of C values from say 0.9 to 1, instead of 0.85 to 1.

...

Interestingly out of the last 33 comps that have been run that affect the wrl there are 11 wins in the top 10 teams (i.e the top 2% of the teams have 33% of the wins), the top two teams have 7 wins between them. The only controversial one is GFR who are sitting at 30th with another 8 wins, but one exception that has been discussed quite a lot. Had they not done horribly in the last comp they would be firmly near the very top. Without checking I would suggest that it is unlikely to find a comp win in the last 3 years outside of the top 30 teams (i.e. top 6%). This would indicate to me that there is a pretty reasonable balance between reliability and competition winning potential.

The only glaring problems are the C-factor issues which have a large effect on wrl and seemingly has a minimum that is not based on true competition scores, and the issue of non-regular competitors.

Kev

TMichaels

11-10-2012, 04:32 AM

Kev,
the only issue I personally see with this is, as said before, that it would rank some competitions on the same level which are in fact not. Because all comps which are now below 0.9 will then be lifted up. So we lose resolution/differentiation between the comps.
It will not fix the remote comp problem IMHO.

I will see, if we can setup a second WRL under a hidden link to be able to "play" with the different factors and try out the improvements suggested in this thread. Maybe that sheds some more light on things.

From reading this thread I identified three major concerns:

1) The C-Factor does not accurately balance the competitions, if they are remote. Number of teams should also be taken into account somehow.

2) The choice of the actuality factor may put to much emphasis on the most recent event.

3) Inactive teams are still ranked high in the WRL and may climb.

Have I forgotten or misunderstood anything?

Kevin Hayward

11-10-2012, 05:39 PM

Tobias,

One thing you shouldn't forget is the consistent thankfulness for the world ranking system.

Just about any time a suggestion is made it has been something you have carefully considered and provided a good response. This sort of transparency of process is fantastic.

Kev

TMichaels

11-11-2012, 06:30 AM

Kev.
thanks for the kind words. Most of the kudos go to Sebastian, who developed the basic formulas currently in use, and Daniel, who implemented them and imports all of the data and maintains the system.

I joined the team of the WRL when we included the EVs and became more like a spokesperson and theoretician, trying to collect team feedback and make our processes transparent.

I always felt, when I was a team member, that the whole organizational/official side lacks transparancy. Not because someone wants to hide something, but because no measures where taken to spread information. So one of my goals is, now being part of the dark side, to make everything related to offical and oganizational processes more transparent. Openly discussing or explaining why things are done the way we do them is definitely one of the most important and hopefully helps to give teams and alumni an insight, making the more difficult discussions easier to understand.

Feedback from our customers, which team members and alumni are, is always appreciated! It helps to get a different view on things.

Bemo

11-12-2012, 02:17 AM

I would like to add one more point, which is a bit tricky at the moment. And that is the fact that there are some comps at which IC and E-cars are ranked together and at others they are not. If they are ranked together this leads to significantly lower winning scores. As Kev already stated, at Austria an UK the winning scores were the lowest. Both comps are mixed ones.
The problem is, if you attend with an IC car (for example), you will usually loose points in Accel and Efficiency on the E-teams. The E-teams on the other hand loose points in Endurance etc. So for the competition itself there might be a reasonable balance between the concepts, but in the world ranking list, you will score lower, due to the fact that it was a mixed competition.
Maybe normalizing the winning score to 1000 points and then multiplying it with the C-factor could improve this.

The only other solution I see is to recalculate the results of the competition for IC and for E-cars only. But that would be quite some effort I guess, so this won't be a very practical approach.

And as Kev already said, thanks for all the effort and the open minded discussions about the system.

TMichaels

11-12-2012, 07:40 AM

Hi Bemo,
we also thought many times about how to score the mixed events in the WRL.

Recalculating scores was on the list, but as you say: It requires a lot of effort and many events do not publish all necessary data to do that, especially for Efficiency/Economy. This is why we did not consider the recalculation method in the end.

We also noticed that the overall scores seem sometimes to be lower for mixed events. The EVs suffer in Cost and Endurance, while the ICs lose points in Acc, AutoX and Efficiency.
On the other hand you could say: 4 cylinder cars gain points in Acc, while 1-cylinder cars gain points in Efficiency. Isn't it the same? Still they are ranked in the same WRL http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif
So it could be argued that, if you decide to enter a competition where ICs directly compete against EVs, it is your choice and you are accepting the downsides with respect to total points scored.
BTW: I entirely recalculated the results of FSG2012 to combine the classes and Delft would have won, scoring 912pts., in front of Zürich with 866pts and Stuttgart C with 836pts. Therefore I think we should be careful when judging this problem based on "early events" in the saison.

Normalizing the scores to 1000 points does not do an accurate job in my opinion, as it would hide all the other aspects of the scoring: You can still have a hard fight between teams which is not related to IC vs. EV, but which makes them lose points. This would be totally neglected by normalizing. It is a constructed situation, but a team winning a competition with 600pts would receive 1000pts in the WRL as would a team winning with 850pts. But the second team did a better job, assuming an equal C-Factor. (Weather influence is a different story.) Therefore we do not think that normalizing is an adequate method of solving this problem. But sadly, we also have not managed to come up with an alternative and satisfying solution.

It boils down to the fact, that IC and EV cannot be compared directly, even if the total event scores might indicate this. It only means that the rules are balanced (for now) with respect to overall competitiveness, but it does not prove that this direct comparison is feasible at all.

Markus

11-12-2012, 12:06 PM

I still don't see a reason why not combine combustion and electrical world ranking?

There's a lot of concepts within the competition already that can't (shouldn't) be directly compared but that is the current game. And with more and more competitions putting IC and EV cars on the same line it's even more about the choice of overall concept.

For example the rules honestly give quite an (unfair?) advantage to teams using monocoques in terms of weight, especially for the electric cars. Lightweight spaceframe would be possible, if teams would have the chance to validate the equivalency of their design.

IMO the decision to keep different world ranking lists just seems FSG biased (because they do it that way).

PS. Actually a lightweight spaceframe would be possible now through a "loophole" in the rules. But I'm quite positive it wouldn't be allowed to run in FSG, even though it would be completely legal and just prove a point what's wrong with the rules...

AxelRipper

11-12-2012, 12:21 PM

Actually it could be argued that at the competitions where IC and EV compete head-to-head, the EV's have a sizeable advantage no matter what they make. Other than the downside of cost, the efficiency formula greatly favors electrics, the maximum power level is easier to hit with an electric motor rather than having to tune to a restrictor, and the implementation of driver assists seems to be easier to implement on an electric car due to the ability to run multiple motors in conjunction with eachother.

Yes, it is the 'future' of automobiles, but trying to score them equally is like comparing a top shelf sirloin to a laboratory engineered food supplement that tastes like sugary hopes and dreams while still remaining a satisfying meal.

Markus

11-12-2012, 01:38 PM

Not quite, electric cars are also prone to score lower in endurance, as it's difficult to achieve continous high performance. Also multiple motors do allow torque vectoring BUT require an arguably huge amount of tuning to benefit from.

Before 2012 I was sure electric cars would have dominated the combined competitions only from the effiency but I was proved wrong: all combined competitions were won by combustion teams.

Another point to mention is that on combined competitions (at least) 4cyl cars can run the endurance on full power, as efficiency doesn't matter further raising the gap.

So strong parts:
IC: Endurance, Cost (price only) (~25% advantage)
EV: Acc, Efficiency, AutoX (slightly?) (~25% advantage)
Neutral: Cost, AutoX, Skidpad, Design, BP (~50% neutral)

So they fall down pretty evenly.

And, while it's not the topic of this discussion, I would question EV as the solution for the future. It might be "hot stuff" at the moment (yet it's not really selling) but electricity will have a very very very rough road to be the propellant of passanger cars anytime in near future.

JulianH

11-12-2012, 01:54 PM

Originally posted by AxelRipper:
Actually it could be argued that at the competitions where IC and EV compete head-to-head, the EV's have a sizeable advantage no matter what they make. Other than the downside of cost, the efficiency formula greatly favors electrics, the maximum power level is easier to hit with an electric motor rather than having to tune to a restrictor, and the implementation of driver assists seems to be easier to implement on an electric car due to the ability to run multiple motors in conjunction with eachother.

Markus is right, it's not that easy to "destroy" the combustion cars in a combined competition.

In 2012 the eCars had too less energy to compete with the combustion cars in Endurance (due to the FSG eCar only Endurance..), this could change for 2013, but then the cars get heavier and are not that competitive in AutoX..

In Austria, GFR was couple of hundreds slower than our car but they gave us roughly 90 points just in Endurance, we didn't have enough energy to drive their times.

Additionally we "only" won 16 points in Efficiency because their single cylinder has a really low energy consumption.

But the biggest effect in my opinion is the reliabilty in the testing phase. In my experience, eCars don't run, so when it comes to Suspension set-up and all these fancy driver aids you are talking about, there is a huge advantage for the Combustion cars in my opinion (Of course, it's "our" problem and we are working on it but I think most of the e-Teams are not quite there yet).

I think the decision to keep 2 competitions at Germany is the right one (even if we would have become 2nd overall at FSG2012 http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif).

Bemo

11-13-2012, 01:54 AM

Originally posted by TMichaels:
On the other hand you could say: 4 cylinder cars gain points in Acc, while 1-cylinder cars gain points in Efficiency. Isn't it the same? Still they are ranked in the same WRL http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

It's not the same. 4cyl cars are driving against singles at all events, while there are only some events were IC cars drive against E cars.
Another difference is that 4cyl cars and singles are built according to the same rules set. That's just my opinion.
Of course every team hast to decide themselves if they want to compete in mixed events. But if the goal of a team would be to get ranked as high as possible in the WRL, they should avoid mixed events, because for these events you will score less in the WRL for the same performance.

Originally posted by TMichaels:
It boils down to the fact, that IC and EV cannot be compared directly, even if the total event scores might indicate this. It only means that the rules are balanced (for now) with respect to overall competitiveness, but it does not prove that this direct comparison is feasible at all.
I couldn't agree more. What a lot of people, who are claiming they should always be scored together miss, is the fact that there are different rules sets for both concepts. Different ways of limiting power is just one example. Or to make a provoking statement: What about leaving all rules as they are but make the Endurance event 44km instead of 22km. Then no electric car will ever be able to win against an IC car.
Having competed in both classes myself I have to say that it is great we have both as the E-cars bring a lot of new aspects and interesting technical possibilities into the series. But it is just not possible to compare cars which are built according to different rules. The fact that somehow the scoring system is balanced in a way that they end up in the same range of points overall doesn't mean it is comparable.

Markus

11-13-2012, 02:49 AM

Originally posted by Bemo:
I couldn't agree more. What a lot of people, who are claiming they should always be scored together miss, is the fact that there are different rules sets for both concepts. Different ways of limiting power is just one example. Or to make a provoking statement: What about leaving all rules as they are but make the Endurance event 44km instead of 22km. Then no electric car will ever be able to win against an IC car.
Having competed in both classes myself I have to say that it is great we have both as the E-cars bring a lot of new aspects and interesting technical possibilities into the series. But it is just not possible to compare cars which are built according to different rules. The fact that somehow the scoring system is balanced in a way that they end up in the same range of points overall doesn't mean it is comparable.
And if you lower the endurance to 11km then no IC car would manage... You can push it just the way you want but that doesn't change the current situation.

I want to stress, again, that also monocoque and spaceframe cars are built to different rules (which are not that balanced). Why can they be compared?

There's a reason why the scores are quite balanced: powertrain is a very minor component of the car and the whole event from scoring point of view. Just like frame structure. Yet it still feels like it's a really huge deal (1cyl vs 4cyl vs electric)?

Bemo

11-13-2012, 05:00 AM

I can't see that unbalanced difference between spaceframes and monocoques to be honest. In 08 we blew away everybody with a spaceframe car...

I absolutely hate the idea to change rules to balance different concepts, which aren't comparable, that's what WTCC does. Give the teams a rules set and let them find out what's the best solution within that rules set. If a monocoque is the better technical solution than a steel space frame, well than it is (for some reason nowadays most formula race cars are monocoques, so maybe a monocoque isn't favored by the rules, but the better concept for a formula style race car http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif).

The rules are there to define a task for the teams. In real world you also don't compare are Porsche 911 to a smart as it would be stupid. You could argue that in a combined class you have to figure out if an IC car or an E car is the better option within the rules. But in this case you would have to balance the rules every year to make sure both concepts survive. And in my opinion both series should survive. If it is as important that spaceframe cars can win competitions? Well, I dont't think so.

But back to the topic. Such a ranking is per definition a try to compare the performances of different teams. In the case of FS/FSAE this is quite a tricky task as everyone agrees, I think. The problem in a combined scoring is in my opinion that IC and E cars are way to different to tell which team did the better job. It is like one serves ice cream and one serves burger and you try to say based on there performances who did the better job.

What just came to my mind and is also a bit a problem for comparing scores of different events is the fact that the scoring system itsel varies between different events. Max. scores for the disciplines varies and also the formulas to calculate the points vary. Given all that the WRL already does quite a good job to compare teams.

Doing somethin like the WRL would be much easier if every competition would be run according to exactly the same rules...

Markus

11-13-2012, 05:30 AM

Well, if you take a look in the rules you would notice that 90-99% of tubes for EVs are of rules required dimensions. Or, pretty much everything between front and rear bulkhead including them. Thus design freedom is almost completely minimized.

The main difference is that with a space frame you are not able to validate your geometry or tube sizes according to material of choice, and monocoque rules in the other hand are all about that.

You are not allowed to use welded material tests but you get to validate your panels using tests nobody controls... For instance, our welds withstood a stress of ~500MPa's but we can only calculate them for 300MPa. That means doing stuff almost double as thick, which means doing stuff almost double as heavy. And there is stronger steel out there...

To put it into perspective, if monocoque teams would be required to do all their calculations based on using mediocre glass fibre and polyester resin and on top were required to use certain skin (and core) thicknesses in certain parts of the tub. That would be close to what the space frame rules require. But would still have a bit more freedom... http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

No need to change rules to balance scores, as we already saw in 2012. As stated, powertrain is only part of the car and effects small part of the scoring. This competition is not about racing or power or powertrain! It's an engineering and project management competition. So all solutions teams possibly come up with are comparable to each other. The rules are (or should be) there just to keep things safe.

By the way: how do you feel about changing the aerodynamic rules? Like was done a year ago. Do you hate that too?

TMichaels

11-13-2012, 07:20 AM

Come on, guys, don't go too offtopic here. Start a new thread or use PMs to discuss these matters. This thread is about the WRL.

Markus

11-13-2012, 07:24 AM

So, opinions about combining WRL for IC and EV?

Markus

11-14-2012, 12:14 AM

Tobias, I'm waiting for your and WRL teams response on this.

So far I haven't seen any reasons why not to combine the lists, only statements. Saying "you cannot do that" is not a reason...

Kevin Hayward

11-14-2012, 12:41 AM

Markus,

I think it is a good idea that they are split even if it makes it difficult when they are run in the same class at some competitions.

Even though there has been some talk about the balance of other design choices (monocoque vs. spaceframe) the arguments are flawed. The bulk of the technical rules are about determining a minimum safety specification. There is no attempt (nor should there be) to try and balance these design decisions. If a monocoque offers a clear advantage to a spaceframe then design it and build it. The only rules aimed completely at performance are done on the basis of limiting performance for all to a capped level i.e. the restrictor and wing plan area.

When you introduce the EV cars head to head with IC you now have to balance fuel use calculation, overall power, cost, and design. The EV field is improving much more rapidly than IC technologies, so finding a true balance will mean constant rule changes. Unless you don't want balance which is an argument in itself.

Kev

Markus

11-14-2012, 01:19 AM

Maybe you misunderstood. The point about spaceframe and monocoques was that the minimum safety specification between those rule sets are not the same. While monocoques might be superior in the end, they are still given a helluwa headstart.

Power: intake restrictor has a physical maximum of airflow, which can be used to calculate theorethical maximum power. Using a corresponding limit on electric cars (like now) makes the cars comparable. I don't see a problem here.

Efficiency: Efficiency can be calculated from the amount of energy used weighed with laptime. This is irrelevant to method of energy storage and thus powertrain.

Cost: This is a design call so irrelevant to choice of powertrain.

Design: Irrelevant of choice of powertrain.

I don't see a reason to try and find "true balance" (what is that, by definition anyway?) from the rules but given that there are things that are not equal: where does this huge concern about unequality of EV's come from?

TMichaels

11-14-2012, 01:35 AM

I think the main concern, at least my main concern, is that if competitions decide to run both classes together and compete for the win without the rules being balanced than one of two things will happen:
1) One of the classes will be nearly extincted over time, because all teams that are able to will change to the "dominant" class to have a chance of winning. All teams that are not able to will be left with frustration. This will be a long process of course, but is not desireable.

2) Teams building cars for the class, which is not dominant will stay away from mixed events, making the mixed events a single class event. Problem of the mixed event at that point.

Therefore, if you want mixed events, you have to keep the classes balanced, but that means constant adjustment to the rules, as Kev pointed out. I don't like that either.

Just keep the classes separate and everyone is happy. I could be wrong, but I know a very small number of people that favour mixed events over separate events.

Some things from an organizer's point of view:
Increasing Endurance distance is quite task and would mean to reduce the number of teams taking part, at least for the bigger events.

Playing with parameters like maximum power of the electric cars will always come with the bitter taste of just introducing it for the sake of balance. That does not fit an engineering design competition. In the real world, no one balances for you. You have to find the balance or choose the superior solution, if there is any.

Bemo

11-14-2012, 02:34 AM

My statement about a longer Endurance distance wasn't a real suggestion, just an example how one rule change can clearly favor on concept.

I'm completely with Tobias here. Especially efficiency is a very different point. If you just use the amount of energy used, you will loose an endless amount of points with an IC car which has nothing to do with the performance of the car.

I'm clearly the same opinion as Tobias, just run the two things in two classes and rank them in two seperate world ranking lists.

Or to make a provoking statement once more: Why not ranking the Shell eco marathon teams and the FSAE Baja teams in the same WRL as the FSAE cars?

If someone should confused about the fact, that I'm part of FS Austria, which is a mixed competition, and here stating that this doesn't make much sense: Different people have different opinions and life is about compromises http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif

Kevin Hayward

11-14-2012, 03:45 AM

Markus,

First I think in this case it is very important to balance the performance of EV with respect to IC. I would define this balance as the ability for two cars and teams of similar design and build quality scoring similar points. The rules have been shaped to allow a certain amount of performance for the safety of the participants and spectators. Acceptable safety of the car and competition (which is also relevant for competition insurance) has been set at a certain level. If you introduce EV's that have higher performance you may increase risk significantly. Alternately having EVs forced to a lower performance such that they consistently get beaten removes a massive motivation to develop EVs.

As for your points:

Power: Can't just be done on a maximum power figure. The torque delivery characteristics are significantly different with a IC being limited by gas process that if the same power figure was used the electric motor would dominate with torque. So do we need to calculate a theoretical torque curve and go for average under the curve? Or test all the IC cars that we can. Starts getting pretty difficult to equalise here.

Efficiency: The whole basis of efficiency being in the competition at all is to promote energy efficiency which is determined in the real world by well to wheel. By trying to make these equivalent we get into the same problem as the rest of the world trying to find equivalence. If we do it on pure Joules basis we pretty much make this part of the competition irrelevant. How do we say that an EV with electricity from windpower that uses the same energy as an IC is environmentally equivalent? Or an IC that uses $5 of fuel from a $200 fuel tank being economically equivalent to an EV that uses 2c of electricity from a $20k battery pack? Add to that the idea of ideal combustion efficiency being much lower than ideal electric conversion and we have a pretty uneven playing field.

Cost: Batteries are very very expensive.

Design: At the moment you comapre apples to apples. Design judges for powertrain are IC experts, for EVs they are experts in another area. How do you get down to this implementation of IC is better than that implementation of EV? How about teams allocation of resources? While not a major part of the comp it will require judges to create there own more subjective balancing.

I say just leave them separate. There is nothing wrong with multiple classes, works very well in a lot of forms of motorsport. By leaving the EVs separate you are free to regulate separately and nobody has to worry about two very difficult questions:

1. Do we need balance between the concepts?

2. How do we balance them?

While I have only been involved with IC teams (as have most people in this comp) I love the idea of EVs. The good ones are quick and exciting to watch. I am definitely not anti EV, I just think that we can have two comps living side by side instead of some horrible combination.

...

Secondly (and off topic) I didn't misunderstand at all about the spaceframe discussion. Monocoques have to pass superior safety requirements in the form of perimeter shear tests for a situation where a spaceframe has no protection. While monocoque chassis tests are scrutinised they are not supervised which does leave some element for dishonesty. This however is no different than not having weld inspections etc. Simple fact is that a monocoque team has to do more work to specify safety than a spaceframe does. All of this and the difference in end performance is much smaller than the potential difference between IC and EV. The bigger problem that you allude to is that high strength steel is not given an advantage over mild steel. This is most likely justified on the basis of teams not needing to show heat treatment, state welding procedures etc.

Kev

Markus

11-14-2012, 04:57 AM

Finally we are getting some discussion. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

Originally posted by TMichaels:
I think the main concern, at least my main concern, is that if competitions decide to run both classes together and compete for the win without the rules being balanced than one of two things will happen:
1) One of the classes will be nearly extincted over time, because all teams that are able to will change to the "dominant" class to have a chance of winning. All teams that are not able to will be left with frustration. This will be a long process of course, but is not desireable.
I understand your point here. But I'm not sure about the severity of this threat, as I'm not convinced that everybody would change their design. And if they would the process would probably take so long that there would be prior rule changes with more effect on the outcome. The winning combinations seem to come and go.

I wouldn't worry too much about possible frustrated teams: somebody will always have better school equipment, more money, more and better sponsors, more team members, easier travel and so on. So somebody will always end frustrated. How about the frustration of the teams that can't participate to IC currently? How about those who get left on the waiting list?

2) Teams building cars for the class, which is not dominant will stay away from mixed events, making the mixed events a single class event. Problem of the mixed event at that point.
I'm not after mixed events, I want to discuss about combined WRL. Having both mixed and seperate events would (possibly?) function well with a combined WRL and would show a teams relative position amongst everyone else.

I don't actually have a strong opinion about mixed vs seperate events as I see good and bad in both.

Therefore, if you want mixed events, you have to keep the classes balanced, but that means constant adjustment to the rules, as Kev pointed out. I don't like that either.

Just keep the classes separate and everyone is happy. I could be wrong, but I know a very small number of people that favour mixed events over separate events.
I think there isn't many teams that enter a competition season with WRL standings in mind. The competitions come first and at the end of the season you can see whereabouts your teams stands compared to other teams that possibly didn't attend any competitions your team did. So just an added benefit, not the reason to compete...

Some things from an organizer's point of view:
Increasing Endurance distance is quite task and would mean to reduce the number of teams taking part, at least for the bigger events.

Playing with parameters like maximum power of the electric cars will always come with the bitter taste of just introducing it for the sake of balance. That does not fit an engineering design competition. In the real world, no one balances for you. You have to find the balance or choose the superior solution, if there is any.

I think there is no reason to play with the power of electric cars - by rules you want to reduce the performance of the cars to a certain level to achieve safety. You can have a similar level of restriction for both IC and EV, and at the moment we seem to be quite close.

IC teams could accept the restrictor, why EV teams couldn't?

Markus

11-14-2012, 05:32 AM

Originally posted by Kevin Hayward:
Markus,

First I think in this case it is very important to balance the performance of EV with respect to IC. I would define this balance as the ability for two cars and teams of similar design and build quality scoring similar points. The rules have been shaped to allow a certain amount of performance for the safety of the participants and spectators. Acceptable safety of the car and competition (which is also relevant for competition insurance) has been set at a certain level. If you introduce EV's that have higher performance you may increase risk significantly. Alternately having EVs forced to a lower performance such that they consistently get beaten removes a massive motivation to develop EVs.

Ev power level is already restricted and yet the competition is still groving. I wonder how much motivation it removes from IC teams that they have to use a restrictor?

As for your points:

Power: Can't just be done on a maximum power figure. The torque delivery characteristics are significantly different with a IC being limited by gas process that if the same power figure was used the electric motor would dominate with torque. So do we need to calculate a theoretical torque curve and go for average under the curve? Or test all the IC cars that we can. Starts getting pretty difficult to equalise here.

The torque delivery charasterictics are also signicantly different between naturally aspirated and turbocharged engines... 85kW power limit for electric cars was already in effect in 2012, E cars dominated acc but IC cars dominated endu. Seems like a fair trade to me: E cars achieve better torque and efficiency but suffer from energy storage related problems due to inferial energy density. I don't see a reason to equalise it any further than from max power point of view. If you want "max balance" then everybody has to have the same car and drivers decide the winner. But that wasn't the purpose of the competition or was it?

Efficiency: The whole basis of efficiency being in the competition at all is to promote energy efficiency which is determined in the real world by well to wheel. By trying to make these equivalent we get into the same problem as the rest of the world trying to find equivalence. If we do it on pure Joules basis we pretty much make this part of the competition irrelevant. How do we say that an EV with electricity from windpower that uses the same energy as an IC is environmentally equivalent? Or an IC that uses $5 of fuel from a $200 fuel tank being economically equivalent to an EV that uses 2c of electricity from a $20k battery pack? Add to that the idea of ideal combustion efficiency being much lower than ideal electric conversion and we have a pretty uneven playing field.

How does comparison from pure use of energy make this part of the competition irrelevant? That's how it's done between IC's and that's how it's done between EV's. That is what tells the efficiency of that vehicle, I would say where the energy comes from is outside the scope of this competition. I would also keep enviromental politics out of this competition - we don't need it to measure which car makes the best use of energy during endurance.

Should we compare the prices of fuel tanks then we would have to do that also between IC cars. Rapid prototyped fuel tank vs titanium vs aluminium vs plastic fuel tank. Which is the most enviromentally equivalent and how should we score it? Also different battery chemistries and oh no...

Cost: Batteries are very very expensive.
So is aluminium-beryllium. We would love that for every part of the car.

Cost of parts is a tradeoff and the teams must consider which gives them the best benefit. Again, this is a design decision.

Design: At the moment you comapre apples to apples. Design judges for powertrain are IC experts, for EVs they are experts in another area. How do you get down to this implementation of IC is better than that implementation of EV? How about teams allocation of resources? While not a major part of the comp it will require judges to create there own more subjective balancing.

The purpose of the design event is to score teams understanding about their design: what they did and why, and who can explain their work best. Design is not (and should stay that way) about comparing the cars to each other "who did it in a best way".

If the judges want to decide which one is best they have to do subjective balancing. But that's not what the judges want to do... There is no absolute truth so why would they want to find it?

I say just leave them separate. There is nothing wrong with multiple classes, works very well in a lot of forms of motorsport. By leaving the EVs separate you are free to regulate separately and nobody has to worry about two very difficult questions:

1. Do we need balance between the concepts?

2. How do we balance them?

While I have only been involved with IC teams (as have most people in this comp) I love the idea of EVs. The good ones are quick and exciting to watch. I am definitely not anti EV, I just think that we can have two comps living side by side instead of some horrible combination.
As stated earlier, I want to discuss about combining WRL not the events. I just wanted to point out that there was and is already a lot of mixed events.

I'm a fan of studying the possibilities and then making decisions. Not so much about just making decisions.

Secondly (and off topic) I didn't misunderstand at all about the spaceframe discussion. Monocoques have to pass superior safety requirements in the form of perimeter shear tests for a situation where a spaceframe has no protection. While monocoque chassis tests are scrutinised they are not supervised which does leave some element for dishonesty. This however is no different than not having weld inspections etc. Simple fact is that a monocoque team has to do more work to specify safety than a spaceframe does. All of this and the difference in end performance is much smaller than the potential difference between IC and EV. The bigger problem that you allude to is that high strength steel is not given an advantage over mild steel. This is most likely justified on the basis of teams not needing to show heat treatment, state welding procedures etc.

Kev

Perimeter shear test is made to calculate strength of inserts. It in no way represents actual penetration into the driver's cell in case of an accident, it just makes sure that the hoops and belts will stay on.

Penetration preventing is not part of the minimum safety rules but of course a monocoque will have an upper hand. The amount of work to specify safety for the monocoque is honestly minimal with the introduction of SES. And even before it was not that big of a deal compared to the amount of work to just design the monocoque. Proving equivalency is not a berden to compare to...

If you want to know what's wrong with this you can do a "small" excersice: monocoque rules are based on an imaginary baseline tubular steel chassis. First take this baseline design and make an equivalent monocoque design. Then make an space frame equivalent to the freshly created monocoque without following spaceframe rules. The end result will be very different (if you wish so) with a much higher stiffness and/or less weight.

Compare that to a mathematical proof. Would it work in the same way...?

Bemo

11-14-2012, 06:09 AM

Markus, you are seeing a couple of things to easy.

First of all if you want to have a combined WRL you definitely NEED mixed events. How do you want to compare scores of teams who take part in completely seperate competitions? Then you really could also rank the Baja SAE teams in the WRL.

If you score efficiency just according to used energy all E-cars will score very near to 100 points and all IC-cars will be near zero. It would be like a fixed penalty for driving an IC engine.

Next point is the power limitation of the cars. Giving the IC teams a restrictor and the E teams a max power output of the accumulator are completely different types of restriction. Of course you can balance both numbers until the cars score equaly, but that again doesn't mean it is compareable.

Also about judging you're seeing the world a bit simple. You need different powertrain judges for E- and for IC-cars. How can you say design is not about "who did it in a best way"?!
Of course it is. What else should it be about? Teams explain what they did and the approach the judges find most convincing scores highest.

Markus

11-14-2012, 07:29 AM

Originally posted by Bemo:
Markus, you are seeing a couple of things to easy.

First of all if you want to have a combined WRL you definitely NEED mixed events.
Please feel free to justify this statement.

How do you want to compare scores of teams who take part in completely seperate competitions? Then you really could also rank the Baja SAE teams in the WRL.
Isn't that the idea or WRL, to compare scores of completely seperate competitions? Mixed events are already effecting both lists, what is the difference in seperate events affecting one list?

If you score efficiency just according to used energy all E-cars will score very near to 100 points and all IC-cars will be near zero. It would be like a fixed penalty for driving an IC engine.

Next point is the power limitation of the cars. Giving the IC teams a restrictor and the E teams a max power output of the accumulator are completely different types of restriction. Of course you can balance both numbers until the cars score equaly, but that again doesn't mean it is compareable.
Both are maybe physically different but they limit exactly the same attribute. Don't they?

Also about judging you're seeing the world a bit simple. You need different powertrain judges for E- and for IC-cars. How can you say design is not about "who did it in a best way"?!
Of course it is. What else should it be about? Teams explain what they did and the approach the judges find most convincing scores highest.
Yes you do need different judges. Just like for suspension, brakes, aero, frame, cooling and so on...

The problem with judging for the "best approach" is that then this "best approach" would have to be defined. And it would require god-like judges. And it would still be highly subjective. It would also make the design event completely useless: what is the point of judges guessing which of the cars will be best when the dynamic results will show that anyway?

So the judges score the teams for "what they know about the things they did" instead of "what they did". Of course that changes a lot from competition to competition but this is how it's done in the major competitions with high quality of static judging.

I will gladly accept a correction from Pat or Claude if it really isn't so.

Bemo

11-15-2012, 03:19 AM

If you wouldn't have mixed events and tried to score IC and E cars in combined WRL you would run into the same problem we already have with FSAE-J and FSAE-A.
Of course at every competition there are different teams. But (except for these to "remote" comps), there is always a mix of teams, who competed elsewhere. This makes the scores at different events comparable. If a team wins one competition and then goes elsewhere and isn't competitive. What does that tell you about the relative competitiveness of the events? That's how the C-factor works.
If you want to score them together you need to let them run against each other from time to time.

Once more to the power limitation. As it was already mentioned IC engines and electric motors have a very different torque/power characteristic. If you have the same maximum power with an IC and with an E car, the E-car has a clear advantage as it has full torque from standstill, faster throttle response etc. Just believe someone who took part in both classes. It is not at all comparable.

According design. Of course you need different judges for suspension, frame etc. But one judging team is able to judge any team in their class. One suspension judge can be the suspension judge for any team. But if you have mixed events one powertrain judge can only be the powertrain judge for certain teams and that is a major difference.

The discussion about "what they know", "what they did" is in the wrong place here. Even if it was only about the knowledge of the teams. How do you want to compare someone's expertise in IC engines with somenone else's knowledge in E motors?

TMichaels

11-15-2012, 03:55 AM

The discussion about "what they know", "what they did" is in the wrong place here. Even if it was only about the knowledge of the teams. How do you want to compare someone's expertise in IC engines with somenone else's knowledge in E motors?

Amen.

Markus

11-15-2012, 06:44 AM

Hmm. How do you compare someone's expertice in composites to someone's expertice in steel? http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_rolleyes.gif

Amen to those frame judges. Now they are like gods to me.

If you don't want to discuss, it's fine by me. We'll just keep doing it the good'ol german way...

TMichaels

11-15-2012, 09:31 AM

If you don't want to discuss, it's fine by me. We'll just keep doing it the good'ol german way...

Markus, you are showing unnecessary rudeness with that comment. I prefer to keep it factually.

We already have the issue of normalizing judge opinions between queues and between the differences inside the classes, as you say for example between monocoque vs. steel frame. Why make it worse?

You can even ask a "steel frame" guy: Why didn't you consider building a monocoque and the other way around and expect a decent answer. Good luck asking an E-motor guy about IC-engines and the other way round. Steel frames and monocoques have way more in common than IC engines and E-motors.
If you additionally consider the energy supplying system, just try to compare the answers to these two questions:
"Why are running E85 instead of petrol?"
"Why are you running LiMnCo-cells instead of LiFePO4?"

The principle of the questions and thus the answers may be similar, but the details is what it is all about. Good luck comparing the answers. Being able to do that is really god-like.

Markus

11-15-2012, 11:35 AM

Well, this discussion I tried to create has pretty much lost its point in the beginning because:
a) The decision has already been made
b) It's kept sidetracked almost completely
c) Even while on sidetracks it's lacking proper arguments and reasoning

Instead we are stuck comparing powertrains in design, which is 20 points from 1000.

I wouldn't turn down the option of combining the lists without investigating it. If you ever get that shadow copy of the WRL you could try it out which would probably be enough to see if it's feasible.

But of course you can always just say no. At least there's less work included.

The main problem I see is that you would only have one "champion". Which might be a problem if (and when?) there's green money involved in the competition.

PS. You can ask an E-motor guy why didn't you consider using an IC motor and the other way around and expect a decent answer. But this is not what I'd want to discuss about.

Markus

11-15-2012, 11:57 AM

Originally posted by Bemo:
If you wouldn't have mixed events and tried to score IC and E cars in combined WRL you would run into the same problem we already have with FSAE-J and FSAE-A.
Of course at every competition there are different teams. But (except for these to "remote" comps), there is always a mix of teams, who competed elsewhere. This makes the scores at different events comparable. If a team wins one competition and then goes elsewhere and isn't competitive. What does that tell you about the relative competitiveness of the events? That's how the C-factor works.
If you want to score them together you need to let them run against each other from time to time.
Yes, that's true. We would need some mixed events (which we have) and it would definetly be a problem if all the electric teams stopped going to the mixed events.

It would be interesting to see how the combined WRL reacts to seperate electric events. Given that some of the top combustion teams changed to pure electric even the first competitions should have had a somewhat decent competitiviness and thus mix the electric teams into the list.

TMichaels

11-15-2012, 12:12 PM

But of course you can always just say no. At least there's less work included.

Yes, that is mainly why I participate in this thread: To be able to show my superior powers in saying no and because I fear to have to much to do, if anything should be changed. Whenever I read this thread I am giggling underhand, because all those people invest their time to write posts about all the things I don't care about. You should know better, but the position you are starting to take is the easier one of course. Try to not end up like Z.

The main problem I see is that you would only have one "champion". Which might be a problem if (and when?) there's green money involved in the competition.

Who ever cared about a "champion"? And since when is money involved in the WRL? I think I have missed something in the discussion.

It would be interesting to see how the combined WRL reacts to seperate electric events. Given that some of the top combustion teams changed to pure electric even the first competitions should have had a somewhat decent competitiviness and thus mix the electric teams into the list.

There is no magic involved, because mixed events are already scored in the WRL based on a mixed WRL. Therefore for a mixed WRL you just need to take the IC-WRL and the E-WRL and merge them, done. No recalculation needed.

Regarding combined events:
The last posts were only about comparing design, not all the other things that need to be fixed.
I am honestly eager to hear how you would balance the classes as I and some other people have not managed to come up with a solution that does not just lead to playing with the maximum power or the CO2 conversion factor. So just go ahead please.

JulianH

11-15-2012, 12:15 PM

Markus,

I also think that comparing Ecars and Ccars is not "that easy".

On the one hand, we like competing with the combustion cars (like in Silverstone or Austria). It's more fun if you have more competition and in the last season, at least Delft (Silverstone) and we (Austria) came pretty close in getting the first electric victory in a combined event.

But, I personally think that this "close" result at the top of the events is more of a coincidence. In just three years, the eCars were able to win AutoX in Germany against all combustion cars (with and without wings http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif). I think (and hope) that in the next years, the electric cars are going to lose their disadvantage in Endurance and by then, they could dominate the combustion class (if the rules aren't changed). Only the Cost part of the Cost event should be still a perk for the combustion cars.

You may argue, that the combustion teams should switch to Electric, but in my opinion, that would be a shame.

Another thing, as I said the "Top class" of eCars is very small: In Germany, where all eCars come together, P10 in AutoX lost 13 seconds on one lap, this would be P42 in a combined class.

The question now is, if they have done a "P42" job or if it is just more difficult to have a competitive eCar (if you may don't have the sponsors or some different opportunities...).

I can't see a big advantage if you would shuffle eCars and cCars in the WRL. If you want to see which "champion" is the "better champion" compare the events where both champions participated.

Markus

11-15-2012, 11:53 PM

Originally posted by TMichaels:
Yes, that is mainly why I participate in this thread: To be able to show my superior powers in saying no and because I fear to have to much to do, if anything should be changed. Whenever I read this thread I am giggling underhand, because all those people invest their time to write posts about all the things I don't care about. You should know better, but the position you are starting to take is the easier one of course. Try to not end up like Z.
Well you have to understand that your only answer to the discussion was no. I have to make my conclusions from something and that's all you gave. Now this post gave me hope that there might actually be more than meets the eye. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

I will not end up like Z because I don't genuinely care. I do like his writing style, mostly because he at least tries to reason and argument, unlike most of the people here. Sometimes his shot down too eagerly, sometimes he doesn't have a point. But in the end I think he's a good contribution to the forum.

Who ever cared about a "champion"? And since when is money involved in the WRL? I think I have missed something in the discussion.

That was just a provocative guess not related to WRL but the competitions.

There is no magic involved, because mixed events are already scored in the WRL based on a mixed WRL. Therefore for a mixed WRL you just need to take the IC-WRL and the E-WRL and merge them, done. No recalculation needed.
Not quite. You should assign the points of switchover teams to their original teams i.e. there would only be one Delft which would have scores from both. This would need some recalculation.

Regarding combined events:
The last posts were only about comparing design, not all the other things that need to be fixed.
I am honestly eager to hear how you would balance the classes as I and some other people have not managed to come up with a solution that does not just lead to playing with the maximum power or the CO2 conversion factor. So just go ahead please.
And I still think design is not a major concern, it has been done before and it could be done in the future. But I don't oppose seperate events as this clearly isn't a problem there.

My solution would be not to play with the power, just use an equal power limit on both cars, just like now (this is more work for IC teams but that's unfortunate). This might be a gain for the Ecars but it will only have a big impact on acc. I would also go as far as remove the displacement limit from IC's, as the restrictor takes care of the power and there's a lot of interesting powertrain options 600-750cc (especially 650 twins and 675 triples).

I don't like the CO2 conversion factor, just the name implies it's got enviromental politics involved. Instead I would focus on the energy used by the car weighed with laptime. This would still favour Ecars heavily but that is because Ecars are more efficient (regenerating + better powertrain efficiency).

I was a bit shortsighted with the suggestion. Using a combined WRL, in the above mentioned way, doesn't exclude using seperate lists. This would mean some more work because scores would have to be input twice due to differences in team structures. I would see this as a pretty feasible option for a cross-comparison tool but I haven't seen how much work is involved in updating the lists.

Opinions, Tobias?

Markus

11-16-2012, 12:07 AM

Originally posted by JulianH:
Markus,

I also think that comparing Ecars and Ccars is not "that easy".

On the one hand, we like competing with the combustion cars (like in Silverstone or Austria). It's more fun if you have more competition and in the last season, at least Delft (Silverstone) and we (Austria) came pretty close in getting the first electric victory in a combined event.

But, I personally think that this "close" result at the top of the events is more of a coincidence. In just three years, the eCars were able to win AutoX in Germany against all combustion cars (with and without wings http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif). I think (and hope) that in the next years, the electric cars are going to lose their disadvantage in Endurance and by then, they could dominate the combustion class (if the rules aren't changed). Only the Cost part of the Cost event should be still a perk for the combustion cars.
Personally I don't think the Ecars will lose their disadvantage that fast as it would require a leap in battery technology or super expensive batteries.

Otherwise it means a lot more batteries and weight which has a negative impact on performance. Maybe there is a sweet spot where there's not too much weight and enough energy for fast endurance, I won't deny that. But that's left to see.

You may argue, that the combustion teams should switch to Electric, but in my opinion, that would be a shame.
I agree. In my opinion the teams should have all the freedom safely possible. (And that's why I'm not fan of the current frame rules.)

Another thing, as I said the "Top class" of eCars is very small: In Germany, where all eCars come together, P10 in AutoX lost 13 seconds on one lap, this would be P42 in a combined class.

The question now is, if they have done a "P42" job or if it is just more difficult to have a competitive eCar (if you may don't have the sponsors or some different opportunities...).
Without looking into details I would be inclined to say that they did a "P42" job. In all honesty the level outside "Top class" is not that high, and not everything can be blamed on sponsors or ability to do things.

But I see that the level is constantly rising - the combustion class had to start somewhere and 2003 cars already look like they were made for a different clas...

I can't see a big advantage if you would shuffle eCars and cCars in the WRL. If you want to see which "champion" is the "better champion" compare the events where both champions participated.
Personally I don't care about the 1st place in WRL. It's more interesting to see how the teams in the top20 or top50 compare.

Combined list would retain the original purpose of the WRL: being able to compare the performance of different teams. And to stress out I mean performance of the teams, not the performance of the cars.

TMichaels

11-16-2012, 01:19 AM

Not quite. You should assign the points of switchover teams to their original teams i.e. there would only be one Delft which would have scores from both. This would need some recalculation.

Ok, I missed that point, but that could be interesting. A problem that remains is, how to automate it. Due to the high number of teams we are striving to find a heuristic for determining, when a team has become inactive. If we base that on let's say two years no event participation, there will be jump in the WRL position when the teams are joined.

I don't like the CO2 conversion factor, just the name implies it's got enviromental politics involved. Instead I would focus on the energy used by the car weighed with laptime. This would still favour Ecars heavily but that is because Ecars are more efficient (regenerating + better powertrain efficiency).

We are on the same side. The CO2 conversion factor is affected by many things and none of them makes sense in my opinion. I would also favor to compare the cars only on energy being used. Since I have the data from FSG at hand, I will do a quick re-calculation of the scores and post them.

I was a bit shortsighted with the suggestion. Using a combined WRL, in the above mentioned way, doesn't exclude using seperate lists. This would mean some more work because scores would have to be input twice due to differences in team structures. I would see this as a pretty feasible option for a cross-comparison tool but I haven't seen how much work is involved in updating the lists.

Maybe I misunderstood what you are talking about, but we are running both WRLs from the same core database, thus no extra work with respect to importing data should be involved.

As I said before: most work is involved in getting the results into the database. Once they are there, it es easy.

TMichaels

11-16-2012, 01:46 AM

Energy-based Recalculation of Efficiency Scores with FSG2012 scoring scheme:

Worst E-Car: 92.6Pts
Top E-Cars Range: 100-97Pts
Best C-Car: 64.4Pts

CO2-based:

Worst E-Car: 81.3Pts
Top E-Cars Range: 100-93.7Pts
Best C-Car: 69Pts

Recalculation of Efficiency Scores with FSG2013 scoring scheme:

Worst E-Car: 39.1Pts
Top E-Cars Range: 100 - 80Pts
Best C-Car: 0Pts

CO2-based:

Worst E-Car: 39.1Pts
Top E-Cars Range: 100-80Pts
Best C-Car: 0Pts

Energy-based Calculations where done assuming a fuel density of 0.74kg/l and a lower heating value of 11.1kWh/kg.

Quite a gap. With the new scoring scheme of 2013, there is no difference between CO2- and energy-based calculation methods.

Revised Top10:
E1 Delft TU 906,82
E33 Zürich ETH 851,62
3 Stuttgart U 769,78
14 Göteborg Chalmers 768,22
E26 Stuttgart U 759,00
66 Melbourne Monash 755,54
2 München TU 746,73
7 Hatfield UH 734,07
5 Rochester IT 727,56
31 Montréal ETS 710,85

Bemo

11-16-2012, 03:25 AM

Originally posted by TMichaels:

Worst E-Car: 39.1Pts
Top E-Cars Range: 100 - 80Pts
Best C-Car: 0Pts

And that is what I mean. If you take such an approach it is impossible to win an event with a C-car if there is only one well performing E-car, as Efficiency gives the E-cars just a 100-80 points reward.
Therefor you need a different scoring system to keep C-cars in the event. And that's when the balancing starts. Scoring gets once more change into something which doesn't make much sense in a technical view just to have C-cars and E-cars running next to each other and pretend it is comparable.

JulianH

11-16-2012, 03:33 AM

Originally posted by Bemo:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by TMichaels:

Worst E-Car: 39.1Pts
Top E-Cars Range: 100 - 80Pts
Best C-Car: 0Pts

And that is what I mean. If you take such an approach it is impossible to win an event with a C-car if there is only one well performing E-car, as Efficiency gives the E-cars just a 100-80 points reward.
</div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Or you just need a freakish fast Single cylinder wing car.. I mean our performance at FSA wasn't too bad and we only won 18 points in Efficiency compared to GFR.

The 2013 Efficiency rules for Germany of course are solely made for splitted classes.

The 2012 Efficiency rules (-> the 2013 FSAE combined classes rules) are still an eCar advantage but not simply "80 to 100 points".

Markus

11-16-2012, 04:31 AM

Originally posted by TMichaels:
Ok, I missed that point, but that could be interesting. A problem that remains is, how to automate it. Due to the high number of teams we are striving to find a heuristic for determining, when a team has become inactive. If we base that on let's say two years no event participation, there will be jump in the WRL position when the teams are joined.

Maybe I misunderstood what you are talking about, but we are running both WRLs from the same core database, thus no extra work with respect to importing data should be involved.

As I said before: most work is involved in getting the results into the database. Once they are there, it es easy.
Well I guess it's a choice of where to put the automation. If all the teams (i.e. Delft is just Delft, no joins) are input everything works automatically for the combined list. But then there's work for the seperate list to get the switchover years etc.

Also problems may rise from teams switching between E and C often, or having teams that change between one team and E+C team between years.

Technically this might actually be quite challenging.

Energy-based Recalculation of Efficiency Scores with FSG2012 scoring scheme:

Worst E-Car: 92.6Pts
Top E-Cars Range: 100-97Pts
Best C-Car: 64.4Pts

CO2-based:

Worst E-Car: 81.3Pts
Top E-Cars Range: 100-93.7Pts
Best C-Car: 69Pts

Recalculation of Efficiency Scores with FSG2013 scoring scheme:

Worst E-Car: 39.1Pts
Top E-Cars Range: 100 - 80Pts
Best C-Car: 0Pts

CO2-based:

Worst E-Car: 39.1Pts
Top E-Cars Range: 100-80Pts
Best C-Car: 0Pts

Energy-based Calculations where done assuming a fuel density of 0.74kg/l and a lower heating value of 11.1kWh/kg.

Quite a gap. With the new scoring scheme of 2013, there is no difference between CO2- and energy-based calculation methods.
I'm not aware about that change in efficiency scoring but the impact is quite huge. It seems to give a larger spread between E-cars so I guess it had something to do with that.

Without closer inspection the 2012 scores seem quite feasible as there was quite efficient C-cars involved. This shows that efficiency can also be compared to some extent with right spread of points.

Revised Top10:
E1 Delft TU 906,82
E33 Zürich ETH 851,62
3 Stuttgart U 769,78
14 Göteborg Chalmers 768,22
E26 Stuttgart U 759,00
66 Melbourne Monash 755,54
2 München TU 746,73
7 Hatfield UH 734,07
5 Rochester IT 727,56
31 Montréal ETS 710,85
This doesn't look too out-of-place comparing what I saw in FSG 2012. Edit: I think I misunderstood this first... Is this a full recalculation of FSG scores?

But I wouldn't mind if a combined list could be kept around.

Markus

11-16-2012, 04:35 AM

Originally posted by Bemo:
And that is what I mean. If you take such an approach it is impossible to win an event with a C-car if there is only one well performing E-car, as Efficiency gives the E-cars just a 100-80 points reward.
Therefor you need a different scoring system to keep C-cars in the event. And that's when the balancing starts. Scoring gets once more change into something which doesn't make much sense in a technical view just to have C-cars and E-cars running next to each other and pretend it is comparable.
Tallinn won FSH 2012 overall (mixed event) with 0,5pts from economy. So sometimes being effin fast is enough.

You already saw the difference in scoring between 2012 and 2013 FSG. Spread of efficiency scoring is something you have to balance anyway and honestly 2012 scores didn't look that bad.

Markus

11-16-2012, 05:48 AM

Tobias, just to clarify the idea a bit. I was thinking about using only one list of teams to calculate the scoring. For example Delft would have the following competitions effecting it's score: 2010 FS & FSUK, 2011 FS & FSG, 2012 FS & FSG.

On the other hand Rennteam and Greenteam Stuttgarts would be on the list seperately, as they are representing themselves as different teams.

This would also effect the C-factors of all combustion, electric and mixed events. And given that some of the top class teams changed to electric the C-factors should be "on the ball" from the start. This wouldn't also have any inactivity requirements or problems from changing class.

That is why I came to the conclusion that there's some / a lot work to try it out. I suspect this would need at least a second team database that's updated a bit differently.

TMichaels

11-16-2012, 06:19 AM

The remaining issue is: How to automatically determine if a team has merged (C&E team to only E for example, which is common) or has changed from E to C?

Delft, Eindhoven and Zürich went directly from C to E. Zwickau for example started with C, than founded also an E-Team and then merged to E.

I think there can be points in time, where this can't be decided without "adding" outside knowledge, which we clearly do not want to do, because whenever you miss something the WRL would be wrong. And missing something will happen with 600 teams on the WRL.
So we need a good (and well defined) way to "decide" what the current status of the team is.

Markus

11-16-2012, 07:48 AM

I see now. That is actually quite a problem.

One solution would be that all the scores are given under the school, so if a c+e team would participate in the same mixed event it would actually also compete against itself and score for both placings. But I don't think this is either a good or usable solution, especially as there are schools where combustion and electric teams actually are seperate projects and unifying them would be unfair.

Another option would be to score under the team that "continues", i.e. when a C+E team joins to a E team only E team scores would count. This is also problematic but maybe better than the above. This could be done every season but in some cases this could lead to a "boosted" WRL ranking.

A diplomatic approach could be that the better score stands, i.e. when a C+E team joints to a E team, it would keep C score history if it was better. This could only be done after the season (or after registrations) and might need manual work (checking changed team statuses = not good). This actually doesn't sound bad but I don't have time to think about this properly now.

All of these where thrown in the air in quite a hurry, so excuse me if they are a load of c**p. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

RenM

11-18-2012, 07:19 AM

Originally posted by Markus:
Tallinn won FSH 2012 overall (mixed event) with 0,5pts from economy. So sometimes being effin fast is enough.

Not to take any credit from Tallin or FSH, but FSH is not exactly the most competitive Event in the world.

Markus

11-18-2012, 10:16 AM

Originally posted by RenM:
Not to take any credit from Tallin or FSH, but FSH is not exactly the most competitive Event in the world.
Coming from a team that's recently had more luck than performance? http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_rolleyes.gif

PS. Tallinn (stuck in 2nd gear) was 65 seconds faster in FSUK endurance than Uni Stuttgart.

Bemo

11-19-2012, 02:04 AM

Originally posted by JulianH:
Or you just need a freakish fast Single cylinder wing car.. I mean our performance at FSA wasn't too bad and we only won 18 points in Efficiency compared to GFR.

Yes, but that was with a scoring system based on a CO2 conversion. If you would just go for used MJ that 18 points would surely change to 80...

Bemo

11-19-2012, 02:12 AM

Originally posted by Markus:
Coming from a team that's recently had more luck than performance? http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_rolleyes.gif

First of all RenM and me are both alumni and not involved in the current team. And second, where exactly had Rennteam luck at FSG 12? At FSAE Italy they won because Hawks didn't finish, but that also happened to us the other way round in the past. "To finish first, you have to finish first."
You always need some luck to win an event. But you can't win only because of luck, you have to bring yourself into a position were you can have that luck.

Reducing other's efforts in such a way is quite a bad attitude. As RenM said, nobody sais the Tallin guys hadn't done a great job, but it is a fact that FSH wasn't a very competitive event.

Markus

11-19-2012, 10:52 AM

Originally posted by Bemo:
Reducing other's efforts in such a way is quite a bad attitude.

but it is a fact that FSH wasn't a very competitive event.
So who is doing it and with what attitude?

Originally posted by RenM:
Not to take any credit from Tallin or FSH, but FSH is not exactly the most competitive Event in the world.
What is the contribution of this statement to this thread and where are the arguments?

Firstly that's trivial (everybody knows that) and secondly it doesn't mean this event is somehow easy to win. For example:
-FSH2011 2nd overall car was fastest in FSAE-M 2012 autocross.
-FSH2012 1st overall car clearly fastest in FS2012 endurance
-FSH2012 competitiviness factor > FSI2012 (and will probably rise in 2013)

Originally posted by Bemo:
First of all RenM and me are both alumni and not involved in the current team.
Good for you, I'm (mostly) done too. Coincidentally I'm wearing a F0711-5 shirt at the moment...

And second, where exactly had Rennteam luck at FSG 12?
Uni Stuttgart had strong statics and a mediocre but reliable car (for top class that is).
Honestly I think that is a good approach and with the aid of unreliability of some others (GFR and Rolla mainly) it paid out.

So just for comparisons sake: seeing that Rennteam seems to be strong in statics only at FSG, they would have been against a tough competition in FSH2012... If I'd have to put my money on that bet, well, think about it. 2 seconds per lap...

(If you want to settle that, then welcome to Baltic Open. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif Would be cool to have you there, especially F0711-3.)

You always need some luck to win an event.
I agree.

But you can't win only because of luck, you have to bring yourself into a position were you can have that luck.
I disagree. FSUK2011 was "only luck" in a sense that pretty much anybody could have won that event. But this doesn't count for competitions that have decent weather. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif So let's get back to the subject shall we?

Bemo

11-20-2012, 07:39 AM

Originally posted by Markus:
Uni Stuttgart had strong statics and a mediocre but reliable car (for top class that is).
Honestly I think that is a good approach and with the aid of unreliability of some others (GFR and Rolla mainly) it paid out.

So according to you scoring well in statics is luck?!
And by the way Rennteam was second in Endurance very close to RIT and if you have a look into the results you will see that they definitely would still have been the overall winner if GFR and Missouri would have finished. FS2011 was luck, FSG2012 was good effort.

AxelRipper

11-20-2012, 08:26 AM

Originally posted by TMichaels:
Energy-based Recalculation of Efficiency Scores with FSG2012 scoring scheme:

Worst E-Car: 92.6Pts
Top E-Cars Range: 100-97Pts
Best C-Car: 64.4Pts

CO2-based:

Worst E-Car: 81.3Pts
Top E-Cars Range: 100-93.7Pts
Best C-Car: 69Pts

Recalculation of Efficiency Scores with FSG2013 scoring scheme:

Worst E-Car: 39.1Pts
Top E-Cars Range: 100 - 80Pts
Best C-Car: 0Pts

CO2-based:

Worst E-Car: 39.1Pts
Top E-Cars Range: 100-80Pts
Best C-Car: 0Pts

Energy-based Calculations where done assuming a fuel density of 0.74kg/l and a lower heating value of 11.1kWh/kg.

Quite a gap. With the new scoring scheme of 2013, there is no difference between CO2- and energy-based calculation methods.

Revised Top10:
E1 Delft TU 906,82
E33 Zürich ETH 851,62
3 Stuttgart U 769,78
14 Göteborg Chalmers 768,22
E26 Stuttgart U 759,00
66 Melbourne Monash 755,54
2 München TU 746,73
7 Hatfield UH 734,07
5 Rochester IT 727,56
31 Montréal ETS 710,85

To get back on topic: It would be interesting to see if this score trend would carry over to combined events (Namely FSUK). I've been trying to find the data for a while in this discussion, but I haven't been able to: If I remember correctly when the scores for FSUK came out either this year or last, they were similar to your calculations for the CO2 based, where the worst E-car was ~80 and the best C-Car was ~60. Thats an automatic 20 points to the E car. Does this offset the speed differential in endurance? Very possibly. However with the new scoring, if that were to be at a minimum 40 points difference, that's huge. And when you actually figure that the top teams in efficiency are usually the fastest teams as well (especially with efficiency vs economy scoring) then you're looking at an automatic 80-100 points being given to an E-car team just for having an E-car that can finish endurance.

JulianH

11-20-2012, 09:57 AM

Axel,

I think you are mixing several points.

FSUK 2012 was scored with economy, not efficiency.

I think this was a clear advantage for the eCars. Zwickau won combined Economy / Endurance with one of their four motors and they were clearly off-pace compared to the flying combustion cars.

FSUK 2013 and the different 2013 mixed events are probably scored with the solution from FSA 2012: Efficiency based on CO2. I think this is a fair scoring system. You still gain some points for "just being an eCar" but you are not destroying the fast single cylinder cars.

The scoring system of FSG2013 is clearly only possible for split classes because it focusses on comparable consumptions.

I think, if top teams (Electric and Combustion) will attend FSUK and FSA 2013 it will be once again pretty close between Electric and Combustions. (I think the Top class of the eCars will grow dramatically this year...)

AxelRipper

11-20-2012, 10:48 AM

Originally posted by JulianH:
FSUK 2012 was scored with economy, not efficiency.

Ah, my bad there. It was economy (power used) plus scaling factor then, just like FSAE has been in the past for gas/e85?

Keep in mind, on the economy front, it was always a good way for a team having a crappy competition to accomplish something in the end if their car wasn't running real good (we finished 3rd in economy 2 years in a row with a carbed single), but even that hasn't been the case for a few of the recent competitions (GFR and Wisconsin winning economy). That is something that will be going away with the efficiency rules (For the better? I'm sure the top teams will say yes, but the mid/back marker teams, not so much).

Will be interesting to see what happens this year with this, but it still favors one class over another making true parity in a centralized ranking system difficult and possibly meaningless (not that the WR means a whole lot to most, but the debate is always fun).

JulianH

11-20-2012, 11:22 AM

Yes, they calculated the consumption (litres or kWh) into a CO2 value and compared those.

You are right about "back marker teams" will have a really difficult situation to score big in Efficiency.

Of course it favors faster cars.

You still have a chance (Ostfalia won FSG 2011 against GFR but they didn't focussed on fuel at all there) to win Efficiency but if there is a fast single (like Montreal ETS) it is near to impossible to win with a slow but efficient car.

If this is "correct" is debateable.

I personally like the change. Not because fast cars score higher but because it changes the running "behavior" of the front-runner teams.

For me it would be ok, if some slower teams would be able to win Fuel (like Cost or Business) but with the old scoring, the optimal strategy was to coast through an Endurance and this should be the way to go for the winning cars.

RenM

11-23-2012, 11:47 AM

Originally posted by Markus:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by RenM:
Not to take any credit from Tallin or FSH, but FSH is not exactly the most competitive Event in the world.
What is the contribution of this statement to this thread and where are the arguments?
</div></BLOCKQUOTE>

The contribution is, that while it is possible to win an event with Zero Points from Economy or Efficiency (like you stated), it does not mean that it is normal and with strong competitors like at FSG its close to impossible.
(The normal Point difference between Place 1 and 2 at FSG is 30-50 Points)

Plus: only looking at the winner of a competition doesn't give a good indication of the competitiveness of an event.

Originally posted by Markus:
Honestly I think that is a good approach and with the aid of unreliability of some others (GFR and Rolla mainly) it paid out.

http://www.formulastudent.de/u...2_FSC_OVERALL_01.pdf (http://www.formulastudent.de/uploads/media/2012_FSC_OVERALL_01.pdf) .....

Bemo

11-26-2012, 03:06 AM

Still Markus will be convinced that Stuttgart only won because of the DNFs of Missouri and GFR as they both would have obviously scored 500 points in Endurance if they would have finished.
Not to mention that Missouri was slower than Stuttgart and GFR only a little faster. But why bother yourself with facts when your opinion is settled?
Man, Helsinki used to be such a cool team...

Markus

11-26-2012, 04:30 AM

RenM: So how does that contribute to the world ranking list?

It's highly unlikely to win a seperate event with zero points in economy but in a mixed event the points spread is wider and thus it's possible. And on top, Tallinn's car was terribly fast and I guess their strategy was to use autocross maps in endurance because the economy points would have been low anyway.

It's also to note that at least combustion cars burn more fuel in FSH due to cirmunstances (very high grip).

Plus: you only need 2 tough teams to make the event hard to win. You need 10 to make it competitive. Looking at the top 3 of the competition will give you a fairly good view how tough it is to win (but of course you have to know some teams to make a valid guess).

I did a fast recalculation of FSG scores but I didn't bother to post it as this discussion is completely worthless. But here we go, with GFR finishing endurance:
Stuttgart: -75pts (endu) -20pts (fuel) = ~790pts
GFR: +320pts (endu) + 90pts (fuel) = ~790pts

It would have been a really close call but it's difficult to say who would have won. Would have been down to very small things... Anyway, I didn't say FSG was luck. Actually I said the opposite.

Bemo: Missouri had the fastest time on autocross scoreboard but they took quite a lot of cones. I'm not completely aware how accurate the scoreboard is compared to recorded scores though. Missouri was a bad example for this, as they knew they can't finish endurance. And about GFR, do you honestly think that almost 2 seconds per lap is "not that much faster"?

And for you Bemo, it's not polite to deliberately misunderstand my posts or to post opinions as mine. As you will surely continue your behaviour, as witnessed by you getting closer to a personal level, I will not continue this discussion here. If you wish, we can meet for a beer and discuss anything in life but this thread jacking has to stop...

And about being cool, the same goes for Stuttgart. I guess those days when our teams were cool are just so far behind. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif

Bemo

11-26-2012, 05:03 AM

Originally posted by Markus:
Coming from a team that's recently had more luck than performance? http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_rolleyes.gif

What is there to be misunderstood? This is propably one of the most unpolite statements ever written on this forum as it basically sais that a team who has won more than 10 competitions within 5 years has more luck than performance. Do you REALLY expect people from that team to stay calm here?

RenM

11-26-2012, 05:24 AM

I dont doubt that Tallinn is a good team and i honestly believe you that they were very fast, but that is not the point. Winning without scoring in Fuel is an extreme exception that cant be taken as normal when you are making rules.

Given the fact that you have 2 equally good teams: Both score well in statics and both will be similarly fast in acceleration, skidpad and possibly autocross. In an event running the normal FSAE rules the team that gets zero points from economy will have to go 14% faster then the team that gets 100 points. 14% means 7!!!! seconds on a 50 seconds lap. With FSG Rules its still 6 seconds. That ridiculous. Plus it makes economy totaly worthless for C-cars as they wont score any points anyway.

And to hopefully end this discussion and calm everyone down a bit, i did a calculation of endurance points based on the lap times published by FSG and not based on my believe. Of course we can only have a look at GFRs first driver and we dont have any information about GFRs cones but it will still be sufficient. GFRs first driver needed 676s. Including cones the Rennteam finished endurance in 1382s which results in an average of 691s per driver. Given GFR won the Endurance with a similar pace from the second driver they would of course score 325 points and the Rennteam would have gotten 300 points which is 21 points less then they actually got at FSG.

With Endurance Scores and without Efficiency:
Stuttgart: 768 Points
GFR: 705 Points

Now we dont know how much fuel GFR has used, but its quite safe to say, that they would have not been able to reduce Rennteams score by 60 points.

Markus

11-26-2012, 08:45 AM

Originally posted by Bemo:
What is there to be misunderstood? This is propably one of the most unpolite statements ever written on this forum as it basically sais that a team who has won more than 10 competitions within 5 years has more luck than performance. Do you REALLY expect people from that team to stay calm here?
Usually people are willing to stand their own game. So I expect people are able to receive similar statements than they give out.

My statement was intentionally provocative and I admit maybe a bit too harsh. But it was based on similar "facts" than RenM's statement about Tallinn and FSH. Seems it served it's purpose maybe a bit too well?

Originally posted by RenM:
I dont doubt that Tallinn is a good team and i honestly believe you that they were very fast, but that is not the point. Winning without scoring in Fuel is an extreme exception that cant be taken as normal when you are making rules.

Given the fact that you have 2 equally good teams: Both score well in statics and both will be similarly fast in acceleration, skidpad and possibly autocross. In an event running the normal FSAE rules the team that gets zero points from economy will have to go 14% faster then the team that gets 100 points. 14% means 7!!!! seconds on a 50 seconds lap. With FSG Rules its still 6 seconds. That ridiculous. Plus it makes economy totaly worthless for C-cars as they wont score any points anyway.
I'd say Tallinn and KIT are on quite similar level of performance. Of course winning with zero points in fuel can't be taken as normal but it's still far from impossible. That's what I replied to, it can and has been done.

Under the 2012 rules a good combustion car could have scored up to ~60pts in fuel like JulianH stated. Together with endurance and cost scoring these seem quite balanced out. If mixed events will continue to use similar point scaling in 2013 we will see how it works out.

The FSG2013 efficiency scoring scheme definetly makes winning a lot more difficult for combustion cars and would thus be unfair.

On the subject the larger spread of efficiency points in FSE makes things more fair in combined WRL so seperate events and mixed events should use a different efficiency formula to make comparison more reasonable.

And to hopefully end this discussion and calm everyone down a bit, i did a calculation of endurance points based on the lap times published by FSG and not based on my believe. Of course we can only have a look at GFRs first driver and we dont have any information about GFRs cones but it will still be sufficient. GFRs first driver needed 676s. Including cones the Rennteam finished endurance in 1382s which results in an average of 691s per driver. Given GFR won the Endurance with a similar pace from the second driver they would of course score 325 points and the Rennteam would have gotten 300 points which is 21 points less then they actually got at FSG.

With Endurance Scores and without Efficiency:
Stuttgart: 768 Points
GFR: 705 Points

Now we dont know how much fuel GFR has used, but its quite safe to say, that they would have not been able to reduce Rennteams score by 60 points.
Efficiency would account for around 30pts as an estimate. I didn't do any throughout calculations about this debate as it was not my intent. So I based my estimations pretty heavily on autocross times and 2011 scores spread. Usually autocross and endurance laptimes correlate quite well but it seems that not in this case.

And even with the usual strategy of running the faster driver last you're right, Stuttgart would have come out on top.

TMichaels

11-28-2012, 01:30 AM

RenM, Bemo, Markus:
Leave your team vendetta behind and get back on topic please.

Under the 2012 rules a good combustion car could have scored up to ~60pts in fuel like JulianH stated. Together with endurance and cost scoring these seem quite balanced out. If mixed events will continue to use similar point scaling in 2013 we will see how it works out.

The FSG2013 efficiency scoring scheme definetly makes winning a lot more difficult for combustion cars and would thus be unfair.

As said many times before:
This is a question that depends on the approach and personal opinion:

Do we want technically feasible rules or do we want balanced rules? Both is sadly not possible with E and IC in the same class.

Markus

11-28-2012, 07:18 AM

I'm quite convinced that only time will tell. There is already a quite big mix of technically different things in the rules and as we know they aren't necessarely that well balanced. There is no question that mixed events will continue to exist, especially smaller ones (FSA, FSH, FN), so those competitions have to work on keeping the competition feasible. And hopefully they will succeed in it still within (most of) FSAE rules.

Tobias, do you still think you could give that 3rd WR list a shot to see if it makes any sense?

Bemo, my offer for beer is still valid. Shoot me a PM if you want to redeem it. RenM, you're also invited. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

TMichaels

11-28-2012, 07:29 AM

Tobias, do you still think you could give that 3rd WR list a shot to see if it makes any sense?

Yes, I plan to, but currently my time is eaten up by other things. So I have to ask for some patience http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

MegaDeath

01-17-2013, 11:07 PM

Something interesting I thought I'd bring up. With such a busy European FS schedule coming up this summer, would any consideration be given to adjusting the competitiveness factor for some of those events that are either being run at the same time or within a couple days of another event? I ask this because there will be a big congregation of top level teams from throughout the world at FSG, and in the 30 or so days after there are (by my count) 5 more official or un-official events taking place throughout Europe. I think the problem could be that a team could compete and finish top 3 or 5 in Germany and then go to another completion a few days where there isn't the abundance of top teams and easily win, because the other top teams are spread out competing at other events or just went home. This makes me think specifically of Monash who has won at FSAE-A and actually dropped in the ranking because a lack of competitive teams. It is never a hugely significant drop, but I feel that if the current growth of Formula Student/SAE continues to grow at the rate it has been in the past few years the World ranking system will quickly become inaccurate if top teams from all over the world are competing against each other at a lower percentage of events per year than they currently do.

I know this was supposed to be a bit of a "Suggest something you would change" type of thread, but I figured I would throw this idea out there for people to think about.

TMichaels

01-21-2013, 05:31 AM

Thanks for pointing that out. I have not been thinking about this effect.

Thinking about it, it should still be covered with the C-factor. The WRL expects that a top team scores better with a lack of competition, which sounds reasonable to me in general.

The concept of the WRL is to give an estimated number of points that the respective team is able to score at an event corrected with its C-factor.
Therefore due to the lack of WRL top teams at FSAE-A, it was expected (by the WRL algorithm) that Monash scores more points than they actually did. Btw: Monash did not drop after FSAE-A, but they lost 4 points. The WRL algorithm assumed that they would score 797,68/0,8751 = 930,67pts at FSAE-A, but they "only" managed to score 899pts. Thus they lost 4 points to correct the assumption in the right direction.

Please don't overestimate the accuracy of the WRL. It gives a good hint on the Top20 in the world and maybe even in the actual ranking if you take an error of +-4 ranks into account. But only by the definition and assumptions of the used algorithms.

But this is of course always the case for WRLs such as ATP or F1. Thus the best on top of these ranking lists and the entire ranking is always defined by the assumptions that are explicitly and implicitly made by the algorithm used. Currently F1 awards 25pts for a victory, 18 pts for 2nd and 15pts for 3rd place. If you slightly adjust these numbers then Alonso would have been world champion this year and I am quite sure that nobody is able to really argument why the 2nd place gets 18pts instead of 19 etc.

Change the definitions and assumptions and you change the entire ranking.