Formula SAE Australasia 2010 Competition: - Updates, Pictures, Stories, and More

[DMuusers]

Congrats to Monash! You guys comin to Europe again?
So where are the pictures?

[JasperC]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Chris M:
Jasper,

At UWA we had a lot of trouble getting the car finished on time this year. It's a combination of making lots of changes to the cars design and having a much smaller team than usual.

The car was only finished 6am Saturday morning, and only ran on the track for the first time in the Sunday afternoon enduro. Sounded quite awesome after the muffler blew up. We were all really glad that the track marshals allowed us to keep running for a while with no muffler to see what sort of speed the car actually had.

We're hoping to take the car to another competition in the coming year if we can organise the funding. Hopefully we're able to compete with some top teams again.

Thanks a lot to all of the other teams who helped us get the car running and through all of tech, it's much appreciated.

Congratulations to Monash who blew everyone away. Their car was truly amazing.

Chris </div></BLOCKQUOTE>
Sad to hear you had a tough year but good that you got the car on the track in the end. I hope we can get to see your true shape in Europe then!

Cheers,
Jasper

[oz_olly]

Hey Guys,

I had an absolute ball at this year’s competition. It was such a nice change to have a relatively smooth run through all events and come away with a bunch of personal best results for our team. My goals were design finals, a trophy and complete endurance. We managed to complete all those goals so it made for a very rewarding weekend. I think now we need to look at setting the bar higher and seeing what we can achieve.

There were some really nice cars at the competition, in particular I liked some of the features on the new RMIT car so it's a shame it didn't run much. I feel really sorry for the teams who have previously had great results and didn't do too well this year. On the other hand it is kind of nice to know that tough years happen to the best of us and success appears to be cyclical.

Congratulations to Monash though for an outstanding performance. I would have loved to be at the car swap and have given it a run. So where to for Monash now? Are there any plans to attack the US comps?

I agree whole heartedly with previous comments about the competition being run really well. I really appreciated the way we were involved in recovering our car when it DNF in enduro 1 (due to brake over travel switch). I also really liked the use of the natsoft timing system and being able to watch our driver’s lap times from the pits. Perhaps next year we could look at getting that information put up on a big screen like at FSG.

I would really like to thank all the volunteers who make the event possible in particular those who part with their hard earned and travel significant distances to get to the competition. It's really good to see the number of FSAE grads helping out and I hope to join the crowd for good as a volunteer next year.

Thanks to Scotty and the crew at Monash for giving us the bits to get through sound and any other teams who gave or loaned us stuff that I wasn't directly aware of. It's always a pleasure to help other teams out when they're having a bit of trouble because I understand the feeling only too well from previous years.

For the Sydney teams I think it would be great to try and organise some sort of drive weekend/car swap in the New Year. I know I always enjoy talking to other FSAE teams and I learn a lot talking to them about their cars and ours.

Congratulations to everyone who participated and made it to the comp. You're already miles ahead of the people at your uni's who can't be bothered to get involved.

Cheers

[Brootal]

Tell us more about the lap times in the pits. I had no idea we had access to that info. We were all standing there with our phones getting dodgey lap times.

[Jon Oneill]

Everyone at UTS is absolutely stoked with our comp results this year. We definitely showed our cars potential on the track, and we look forward to taking it to the top teams next year. It took a lot of hard work to make the jump from last in 2009 to 9th this year but it was definitely worth the effort. Now we look forward to driving our car and training up some drivers for the 2011 comp.

It was great to see everybody again, as well as meeting several new people throughout the weekend. It was definitely the best FSAE-A yet. We we're happy to help out a few teams when trouble struck, and we are incredibly thankful to everyone who helped us out when we needed it. It was really nice to see all the teams helping out each other to try and get as many cars on track as possible. It really made it a great event.

Pretty bummed we missed the car swap today, but we'll definitely make more time next year, and ensure we're there for the Tuesday.

Thanks everyone.

[Brootal]

Here you go... few of my pics from the course of the weekend. Just sorting through videos and stuff at the moment, so will add captions a bit later.

[Micko..]

So how did the car swap go???
any photos/videos etc
how did the differant tyres go?

[Scott Wordley]

The car swap went great.

I think everyone learnt a lot from the day.
It would be good if we could get some comments up here about it from the teams who were involved.

Monash turned up a little late (and still drunk!), but we managed to get drivers from Auckland, Swinny, Melbourne, Mizzou and Pete Marsh from UWA in our car. I was pretty impressed but how quickly they came to grips with the car and were able to push it hard.

Our driver Ashan also got to drive Melbourne and Swinny, so thanks heaps for that guys, we learnt a lot about power delivery, pedal feel and steering feedback from the experience.

Also a high thanks to Auckland who were kind enough to lend us a set of their Goodyears which we tested on the car for the first time with great results. We have long been fans of the Avon, but based on how much more composed the Goodies made our car look and the fact that we found similar ultimate grip levels, improved combined acceleration (as Pete said, they have a friction rectangle rather than ellipse!) and better wear characteristics, I think we will be changing to them in 2011. Auckland also loaned us their tyre pyros so we will do some proper back to backs in the coming weeks, but the drivers loved them.

We have some really great in car videos of Pete Marsh in our car on the Goodies so will post them to youtube in the coming days. You have to see the 5m wide lane change taken flat in third gear, its insane. Thanks for all your help and advice Pete and the rest of the UWA team, hope to see you back in the hunt next year.

Thanks to all the teams that came down, we should definitely make the Car Swap Tuesday a tradition in coming years and try to get all the teams there.

Cheers,

Scott

[Brootal]

Short video of our car at the comp.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8RHACr-LGs

[oz_olly]

If you google 'Natsoft' the second or third link will take you to race results. The FSAE-A results are a few places from the top of the list. The results have a summary of fastest laps as well as lap by lap. They were showing this data on a laptop on the tray of the truck in the driver change area (apologies if by pit you thought where the pit garages were). I am sure this data could easily be fed to a large screen if they were feeding it to a laptop. Natsoft do all the timing for V8 supercars and most other Australian motorsports below that.

So who's going overseas next year and where?

Cheers