Who drives your car??

[SpencerB]

Hey Guys,

I'm new to this forum,and new to the FSAE program as well.

After observing my school's FSAE team do some testing at a local kart track, and also watching them do some skidpad testing, I came to realize there are a bunch of novice drivers driving the car. These guys have no clue what a racing line is, how to hit an apex, etc...

How do your teams work? Do the teams recruit 'hot shoe' drivers who will get as much as possible from the car? These people would have open wheel racing experience (not auto-x sedan experience). Or do you just put a 'senior' member into the cockpit and hope he can do well?

I'd like to know how most teams work. Seems to me that a great car isn't anything without a great driver. I'm not an engineer but I have many years of racing experience and know I could help this team win.

Thanks!

[Denny Trimble]

Spencer,
We only allow core team members to drive. We've been lucky to have some fairly good drivers who have motorsports experience, but since the drivers are also the core crew when it comes to all the details of setting up the car, we select them based on demonstrated work ethic as well as driving skill.

We don't openly recruit drivers from motorsport; on the contrary, a Biology major who is an "autocross expert" provided us with a very entertaining display of his skills, or lack thereof.

A year's worth of seat-time in an FSAE car is an opportunity to learn how to act quickly! Only Karts and F1 cars react more quickly.

[James Waltman]

You mean people actually drive these things? When I first found out about FSAE I thought it would be awesome to help build one. It was several days before I even thought about who got to drive.

Our drivers are pulled from the pool of people that put in work on the car. We just work too hard to let anyone else drive. Our goal is to get all of the team members some seat time and then pick the fastest ones to compete. Realistically we hardly get any seat time because we spend all of our time building stuff.

A few guys with real driving experience have shown up to a meeting or two but none of them have helped build anything. We would like to have great drivers but it doesn't seem right to let people drive if they haven't helped. See rule 2.1.2 - Ringers Prohibited

I suspect if you work on the car you will be able to drive it. You will probably be disappointed if you are only planning on driving. What school are you at?

I think that we need to get Denny to come do our Post-Bac (http://vri.etec.wwu.edu/post_bac.htm) program and help us out for a year. He's pretty humble about it but he can really drive.

[Eddie Martin]

We try to let all team members have a go, but it always seems to be core team members who drive. We try not to have our team leader/s drive as they should be making sure everything runs smoothly at the comp. I wouldn't feel right about having a non team member drive the car at a comp.

We have had some professional's drive the cars for comments and publicity but they aren't normally that much quicker than our good guys.

We have been lucky at Wollongong to have some really good drivers. Our best drivers have never had any racing experience and seem to drive bad road cars. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif They are normally pretty good on playstation and gran turismo. They are now onto the harder stuff, grand prix legends. Cool game. Games like this show good hand eye coordination.

You can't beat seat time at the end of the day. Being comfortable and familiar in the car is essential.

Eddie Martin
UOW Racing
www.uow.edu.au/eng/racing (http://www.uow.edu.au/eng/racing)

[rotor]

Grand prix legends is a great game for concentration practice. what sort of consistant times do your guys do around monza eddie?

best driver trianing for fsae apart from the actual car is definately karts for the reasons pointed out above, ie fast reactions.

mark hester
chief engineer
RMIT 2004

[Didier Beaudoin]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by rotor:
Grand prix legends is a great game for concentration practice. what sort of consistant times do your guys do around monza eddie?

best driver trianing for fsae apart from the actual car is definately karts for the reasons pointed out above, ie fast reactions.

mark hester
chief engineer
RMIT 2004 <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Wow, I've been playing GPL for 2 years, and I'm going to my first competition this year. I ran the car for the first time yesterday and I was comfortable from the start. I'm sure it helps.

My GPLrank is -48 or so, best lap mid-1:27s at Monza.

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

[UTA racer rikki]

If you read the FSAE rules, it clearly prohibits "ringers" brought in specifically to drive. With so many responsibilities on a team, it seems unlikely that anyone who really wants to drive a FSAE car can't find some way to contribute to a team.

At UTA, if you're considered a team member then you have the priveledge of driving. We use the term priveledge because it is just that. You don't earn your way into the car by working the hardest. Rewards for those efforts are given elsewhere. You are given the chance to drive by a team decision.

Any team member has the option to go through our driver training program starting with an older and less capable car. Once they reach the limits of that car, they "graduate" into a higher performance car.

That aside, if a new team member walked in a few months before competition and made it clear that he was going to contribute in the future, it would be foolish for us not to allow him/her into a car if they have potential. I have seen this work two ways. The two had several years of autocrossing experience. The first was before I became a team member, but this guy's first time out in the car, he was blessed. He didn't think he earned the priveledge to drive, but the team felt differently. The second was while I was here. This team member gained his priveledge, but didn't shine in the car like he anticipated. As a result, he slowly phased himself out of the team altogether.

Bottom line, it's great to reward team members with driving priveledges, but at competition, I would think you want drivers who can gain you the most points. After all, the best reward is carrying home the overall trophy isn't it?

[Michael Jones]

Very much the same as everyone else. Team members drive the car in practice and testing, and we go through elimination rounds to pick the fastest each year. Makes it fair.

Generally, fast drivers are also some of the better engineers on the team as well. Not a perfect correlation but close.

Those who exhibit too much enthusiasm for driving and not enough for work are strongly encouraged to work more and attract a lot more negative attention than others who work the same amount but don't have any delusions of driving grandeur.

Driving prima donnas are generally shut out in recruiting. One of the easiest ways not to make our team is talk all about driving and zero about what you'd want to do to make the car in the first place. Especially true for non-engineers, since it's rare (but not impossible) to find a non-engineer that can make contributions technically.

[vinHonda]

Same idea as Cornell. Our experienced guys drive the enduro and set the autocross times, but we bring up new guys through letting them work on, and prepare our older cars to drive.

Seat time is important to get a driver up to speed. Experience helps too, if the guy is used to going fast...usually he'll go fast in an FSAE car too.

Vinh

[Mike Shaw]

at A&M, our theory is that only students that volunteer their time with the club / class / car are allowed to tryout to be drivers. freshman and sophmores are encouraged to join the club early and "volunteer" with the car, which involves becoming on officer, attending social events, meeting upperclassman, and helping the seniors in our MEEN 401 & 402 design classes build the car. at all team meetings we take attendance, and selected people try out and later drive for the competition. only the fastest four drivers get to drive. it doesn't matter if they design and build the car, or if they are an officer of our chapter of SAE, or if they are just a freshman volunteer. what matters is if they dedicate some time to our FSAE team, support our team 100%, and are FAST.

our current drivers include 2 guys from the A&M sports car club, one guy that used to drive sprint cars, and a guy that drives competative go-carts. they have been training in last year's car for a number of months, and this year's car for the past 6 weeks or so. only 2 out of 20 people in our design class are divers, which leave 18 people in our design class alone available to tune the car, practice for the marketing presentation, do teh cost report, and WIN design competition! in fact, no one on our teams gets to drive the car until after competition, unless they are a driver.

it's a team effort, though. i'm glad i dont drive, because i'm not the best and i want our car to win, to show how good the engineering program is at A&M, and to show how much hard worth and dedication we put into our car. i have other talents to add to teh team, and i'm happy adding those talents.

[jack]

here at western, we give drivers a shot at the old car, which is a flexy flyer, barely has brakes, and is powered by a 900 RR (unrestricted). if they dont hit a light pole in that, they can probably drive the new car. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif

[Big Bird]

We picked our drivers based on who had the ugliest hairstyle. Rotor was first pick, my mullet earned me a close second. Disco got a drive too - the hair by itself is passable, but the head it is attached to would spook a blind horse....

On a more serious note - a factor that hasn't been mentioned above is composure under pressure. We had plenty of drivers who set quick times in the selection process, but you could tell by the way they were driving that they would be loose cannons. We took into account how ragged drivers looked and even their composure under exam stress and under team deadlines to determine who would be suitable. Those that were at least reasonably quick and consistent in the car, and generally calm by nature got the nod.

I know the above sounds like a load of twaddle. We've chosen from speed alone in past years and found that some of the quick guys didn't handle the pressure of driving in a competition situation. It aint easy when 30 of your mates are depending on you, and all manner of industry personnel are watching. This is where any sort of motorsport experience is helpful, as it helps you to cope with raceday pressures.

Cheers all, another of my drawn out observations...

[MikeWaggoner at UW]

Is 24 really that flexible? Keep in mind many team are around 900 lbs torsional stiffness.


<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by jack:
here at western, we give drivers a shot at the old car, which is a flexy flyer, barely has brakes, and is powered by a 900 RR (unrestricted). if they dont hit a light pole in that, they can probably drive the new car. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

[Denny Trimble]

That depends if you measure through the hubs, or the chassis alone http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

[jack]

...i think at western we have a skewed view of what stiff is...

[Amos]

Jeez i dunno you Americans get it easy don't you!!! As our team is part of a final year project for Mechanical/Mechatronic Engineering it is only possible to take our drivers from our team of 20.

We've already been on a kart day and cut the list down to about 6. We also have two female members that only weigh about 50 kg max (110 pounds). Which as you are all aware will be good for acceleration event assuming they are able to punch the accelerator without sitting and spinning.

I think that the way our team chose the drivers has been pretty fair....... We were driving last years car but couldn't keep it going for long enough for everyone to drive.

Do any other Uni's (Australian maybe) have this project as part of the coursework??? IF so how do you discipline team members to make sure that everyone is contributing?
I figure mose US teams dont have this problem due to it being extra-cirricula.?

[roadrunner]

This year we have team members driving one of the cars. The second cars not built yet so who drives really don`t matter.
The guys have quite a lot of wheel experience though which is good. Quite varied as well including karts and rallying.

Last year we had some seasoned karters and car racers drive.

Our uni is quite lucky though as we have a lot of talented drivers attending. Got a few GT drivers, formula renault and even the odd formula 3 guy knocking about. The real problem is convincing them they would want to drive it!!!!

At the end of the day we just want to see our work cross the line first and the best way is to not let one of us muppets drive the thing to pieces and let someone who will actually make the most out of it.