FSAE cars in US autocross solo series

[JWard]

The UK has just one series comparable to the American Autocross series,'Autosolo' started on '07. Now, UK FS cars are usually built over a year and ran at silverstone just once, some may be taken to a local track (post competition), but they never see the use it would appear some american teams seem to manage, by taking them to autocross events.

As such, I have some questions about FSAE cars in the American autocross series:
-How many FSAE cars compete in the series?
-How many non FSAE cars are in the A-mod class?
-What the rules / regs are like for non road legal cars competing in Autocross? Stringent? Fairly relaxed?

I ask this, because I would like to see some way of getting FS cars into a UK race series, and autosolo is the ideal one. It would however require a specific class of vehicles, and considering the popularity of the sport compared to the US equivalent, I think it may be difficult to propose that a handful of FSAE cars could race the course, at a couple of meets a year.

This year (and previously) a number of teams were invited to compete in a hill climb event, which is governed by the UKs motorsports body, the MSA, so I know that it's certainly not out of the question, which is why I want to get some more information, visit a few autosolo events, and meet the community to gauge the reaction to the idea.

If any other UK teams / alum find this an attractive though, please contact me so we can discuss things further. Maybe someone can pick some holes in my plan or perhaps we may discover it is infact more plausible than some may think.

Joel

[JWard]

The UK has just one series comparable to the American Autocross series,'Autosolo' started on '07. Now, UK FS cars are usually built over a year and ran at silverstone just once, some may be taken to a local track (post competition), but they never see the use it would appear some american teams seem to manage, by taking them to autocross events.

As such, I have some questions about FSAE cars in the American autocross series:
-How many FSAE cars compete in the series?
-How many non FSAE cars are in the A-mod class?
-What the rules / regs are like for non road legal cars competing in Autocross? Stringent? Fairly relaxed?

I ask this, because I would like to see some way of getting FS cars into a UK race series, and autosolo is the ideal one. It would however require a specific class of vehicles, and considering the popularity of the sport compared to the US equivalent, I think it may be difficult to propose that a handful of FSAE cars could race the course, at a couple of meets a year.

This year (and previously) a number of teams were invited to compete in a hill climb event, which is governed by the UKs motorsports body, the MSA, so I know that it's certainly not out of the question, which is why I want to get some more information, visit a few autosolo events, and meet the community to gauge the reaction to the idea.

If any other UK teams / alum find this an attractive though, please contact me so we can discuss things further. Maybe someone can pick some holes in my plan or perhaps we may discover it is infact more plausible than some may think.

Joel

[Michael Royce]

Joel,
The sport of autocross here in the USA (and Canada) is very widespread with clubs across the country putting on events every weekend. Here in Michigan we have the local (Detroit) Region of the (National) Sports Car Club of America (SCCA), the local Corvette Club (Corvette Club of Michigan), the local Alfa Romeo Club (AROC), etc. Many of the car preparation rules are common. But basically, there is class for just about any car, stock, mildly modified all, the way up to A Mod and FSAE. For a full list of the car classes and preparation rules go to www.scca.com (http://www.scca.com) and select Solo, which is SCCA's name for autocross.

The majority of entries in these events are stock, street cars, or ones with just a few modifications that are driven regularly on the street. While we encourage all our local FSAE teams to bring out their cars to our local events, we only get 1 or 2. But quite a few of the teams' drivers do come out with their street cars to get driving experience.

To answer your questions:
- There really is not a "series" as such. The USA is quite a big place! There are local events, such as those I describe above, then Divisional Events covering several states, at which we do not see many FSAE cars. And then there is the SCCA Nationals in Lincoln, Nebraska, where we typically see 8-12 cars with 14-20 entries (2 drivers per car). This is the event at which Mike Stanley set FTD last month. Including the Pro Solo Finale, this event covers a full week and has over 1100 entrants.
- I have no solid number on how many non-FSAE A mod cars there are, but I suspect that it is less than 2 dozen across the whole USA. The number of A Mod and B Mod cars is very small.
- The rules for "non-road cars" are fairly relaxed. But as I said, look at the SCCA web site. SCCA seems to set the national standard here in the USA.

As a former member of the FSAE Rules Committee, I am very, very much against FSAE cars running in hill climbs. Hill climbs are "speed events" where cars can reach very high speeds with trees and other immovable objects close to the course. FSAE car are design to run in "non-speed events", namely autocrosses. These are events run primarily on large paved areas, such as parking lots, with the speeds kept down to "road legal speeds" by course design. I know that some of the FSAE teams "down under" do run in hill climbs, but I am against it, and the Aussies are crazy anyway, right Pat? My advise is "Don't do it!" All we need is a bad accident at a hill climb and the whole FSAE/FS programme could go down the tube.

If you can get an autocross series going in the UK, great. What you will need is:
- One or more sites (large parking lots)
- Cones
- Some timing equipment, preferably light beam (such as I think they use for hill climbs!)
- Insurance (don't try without it).

Within the UK, you will have to work with the MSA. If there is enough interest among several universities, you might start by contacting IMechE/Formula Student and the 750 Motor CLub.

[Michael Royce]

Joel,
I have just looked up "Autosolo", and it appears that as you alluded to, there has been a start in the UK. The only difference is that they only allow road-legal cars at the moment. Maybe you can build on this base to get non-legal road cars, and modified cars such as FSAE/FS cars, eligible to enter. Modified cars might need lightly larger parking lots for safety.

The one thing I did notice is that here in the USA we require ALL drivers to wear crash helmets, even in street cars, whereas it appears that helmets are not required in Autosolo.

That said, I am an advocate of FSAE drivers wearing ALL their safety gear, suits included, at ALL times, including testing. We have seen a couple of conflagrations on occasions!

As far as sites are concerned, you might look at go kart tracks. Some, e.g. Bruntingthorpe, might be suitable.

[Adambomb]

Just to give an idea of the relative race car/street car density at SCCA events, most events I've been to have around 50 or so cars, with maybe 5 purpose built race cars, and a couple race-prepared street cars. Personally I don't ever recall seeing a true a-mod car outside of FSAE cars that have had the restrictors removed, etc. In fact I just read up on the SCCA rules, and the FSAE class (which as I recall has really only been around a few years) is still technically considered a subset of a-mod. There are one or two fast b-mods within about a 3 hour radius of here, and a handful of D and E mods. Rules for the mod classes appear to be much less stringent than FSAE rules. Also a few karts running around, may have 2 or so at an event, often driven by kids. Also bear in mind when I say "here" I mean Iowa, which is mostly known for its tall corn and pork products. There are 3 SCCA regions that service about a 2-3 hour radius, with events at least twice a month within 2 hours between Mar-Nov. The better share of those events are in large parking lots, a couple of gorgeous concrete surfaces at small airports, and a kart track. Aside from that, we drive about 6 hours every March for the FSAE Challenge in Salina, Kansas (which happens to be the opening event for Salina region SCCA) and the 10 hours to the UTA hosted Texas Autocross, which is also held in conjunction with a local SCCA event in July. The relative race car/street car densities there seemed to be about the same as well. Also worth noting that the Salina FSAE challenge and Texas Autocross are really the only times we ever see another FSAE car (but then again, we are the only FSAE team in the state...).

I'd say there is a very strong case for sticking with autocross-style events with an FSAE car. Autocross is inherently much safer than any other form of racing I can think of off-hand, which is why it was chosen as the basis for FSAE. In fact, I got a little nervous even at the kart track, even though we couldn't even get over about 60 at best (we will often hit about 70-75 in large parking lots, and as much as 90 at airports), mostly due to the fact that some of the newer drivers might have trouble with the elevation changes (which was founded, one did go off course just a bit on an off-camber section), and just the fact that once you get off of hard, flat, clean pavement bad things can happen. If anything bad did happen in one of our cars, regardless of who was driving or where, I'd imagine the reaction would fall somewhere between being shut down for a considerable amount of time with a huge change in the way we did things to being completely shut down for good.

[JWard]

Hi guys,

thankyou for your replies, they have been most helpful in my understanding of the structure of the events, which gives me some hope!

I share your sentiments on FSAE cars consistently above 50+ miles an hour. We may have roll hoops, but I wouldn't like to see what it would look like if they actually were used. Like Adam says, autocross style events are certainly the safest style of course for such vehicles.

We have used bruntingthorpe before, but it becomes fairly expensive if you are using it on your own! We've used the track before, for testing before this years competition (and once post competition for a bit of fun).

Well, I think I need to speak to some UK teams, and see if they would at all be interested in racing in autosolo, and if we have enough interest, get in touch with the organisers and see what goes from there I guess. Thanks for putting the information guys, it's been very helpful.

Regards,
Joel

[Adambomb]

That sounds like a good plan, I'm sure there are several UK teams that would be interested. I take it Autosolo is still fairly small and new, I would hope it would not be hard to add to it, and with FSAE's overall very good safety record it should hopefully be an easy sell.