You have been working on this project for 18 months and start looking for international shipping 2 weeks out?
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You have been working on this project for 18 months and start looking for international shipping 2 weeks out?
UQ Racing
Multiple cars with unconventional suspension such as beam axles and mode separation, a custom engine, some of the best aero packages in the world and nearly a third of the field ranked in the top 50 internationally.... backwater indeed. Thanks for giving me your opinion of the Australian competition. Please come visit us sometime and see if we can change your mind.Originally Posted by Pat Clarke
UQ Racing
I would say given the experience we have had with customs, that if you send your car today it will still take 3-4 weeks to clear customs. I don't know about packages from India but I will assume that might be the case. I have passed the details onto our team (though we can only google since IC).
Check what you can on customs but be nothing worse than having to sit through comp with a car stuck at the docks.
In other news, we were out testing with Melb Uni at Oakleigh today and Canterbury have arrived and unpacked at our workshop, their car is a thing of beauty.
From what I have seen so far on Facebook /twitter, a number of teams are yet to launch their car (Auckland, Cant, ECU, UQ, Monash, RMIT, Swinny, Mizzou, Waikato, have all launched, RMITe on wed, Melb on Thurs). Add in your date if you're team is soon!
Ryan Ockerby
Monash Motorsport 2012-2015
Anything from UWA ??
I saw the Griffith car for the first time tonight. It is an exceptional effort for a first year car with minimal university support and a very small team. Going to impress some people!
UQ Racing
I would like to know what car Claude was talking about as well. Like you Mitchell, I am fairly on top of what is getting made and I haven't heard of any first year team pulling off the specs mentioned in his post. It shouldn't be hard to name the team, and I am sure if it is a true story then we would all benefit from learning more about what they did.
There was a few years when the Australian comp languished with some of the world's best teams (UWA, RMIT, Woolongong) on a downturn. However in recent years the level has lifted. Hopefully one day we will once again see multiple Australian teams competing to be the best in the world.
At the big comps there are generally only about 10% of cars that are very competitive (if that). Transferred to a competition the size of Australia that would only be about 3 teams at that high quality. I think that is now the case with a few more teams also improving markedly in the last few years. Picking out one of the minnow teams in the competition and holding them up as the standard in this country is about as misleading as using GFR as an example as the norm in the larger competitions.
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All that being said I welcome any team to come down to Australia. Try and beat Monash in their backyard. I think that is one of the hardest challenges in Formula today.
Kev
To back up what is going on "down under", when we discuss about cool unconventional solutions, we call them "Australian". Seriously, if I could pick any competition worldwide, that would be this one. Not only in terms of people doing things differently, but because of close competition and the whole atmosphere (including the drivers' swap) that IMO embraces the FSAE spirit perfectly. Back to topic...
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Harry Bikas
UoP Racing Team
UoP Racing website
UoP Racing on Facebook
UoP Racing on Twitter
UoP Racing on Youtube
The only thing I truly dislike about the Australian competition is that it happens to take place 9000 miles from North America AND Europe. I would be SO down to go and compete if the transportation weren't so prohibitively expensive. But! The livestream is always very entertaining and the scope of cars seen at the comp is really interesting.
Jay Swift
Combustion Powertrain
Global Formula Racing 2013-2014
Our car has been launched.. just not in Australia. We leave Thursday/Friday and will be opening the crate Sunday night with re-assemble/shake down on Monday/Tuesday. Our car is safely waiting for us at Swinburne and our tires just arrived today as well! I am excited to see all of the 'unconventional' designs in person. The car took a little under 1 month to get the Australia from crating/airfreight/customs clearance.. along with a couple months of planning... and was quite expensive as well. So I agree with you there Jay. We are just looking to get our feet wet with international travel and have some history traveling in Australia. We're looking to expand those opportunities in the future though. One opportunity other teams may try.. we've managed to organize the travel as a 'study abroad' trip and we plan to produce some documentation of the process and how the results of the class work. For anyone interested, I'll be posting about it sometime in the coming months.
As far as batteries go.. we also learned that airlines don't like them very much and had to have one separately shipped, luckily our car is IC so if we need to find one in a hurry there it wont be an issue.
Rory Hourihan
Chief Design Engineer - Mizzou Racing
Mitchell, I was not talking about the cars! The Australian cars are as good as in the rest of the world! That has been the case since 2002.
Check your sources regarding my knowledge of the FSAE/FS events.
You might not know it, But I have been a close friend to the UQ team, even organising for the team to ship their car to Germany at no cost to the team (where they performed admirably, wining the trophy for best dynamic performance).
No, I repeat, the Australian event has become a backwater of FSAE/FS world wide. In years gone by, Australia had visiting high profile Judges, Tech people and world leading teams. Australia was part of the world FSAE family. The event was actively promoted overseas and known as 'The best little competition in the world'. That is no longer the case.
Pat Clarke
The trick is... There is no trick
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