Two simple rules to improve results.

[Dunk Mckay]

So I've been giving advice to my old team, and on occasion members of other teams if I strike up a rapport with them at comp.

I've also spent many a Sunday afternoon watching car after car breakdown, either at Silverstone or watching Hockenheim live on Youtube.

Everyone is unhappy about the amount of teams that breakdown in the grand event. It is, to some extent embarrassing, and to listen to the commentary at these events, it is expected.

But no-one is actually doing anything about it.

I mean seriously, no-one. Sure the IMechE will say they run the "Learn-to Win" event, and FSG have a technical debriefing for team members coming back next year, and there's Pat's corner, and the 'Learn and Compete' book (best attempt so far, but no longer available and needs updating). But these have been going for years no, things aren't getting better.

Some will argue it's up to the teams. It's always been up to the teams to build a car that works! But the current rule book makes them build cars that don't!

So I've had enough. I have two simple rules, that I believe will make a significant difference to the situation.
(Not that I think these will ever be implemented under the current regime, but hey ho).

New Rule Number 1:
-When weighed, your car must have a minimum mass of 200kg.
10 points will be deducted for every kg under this threshold.

New Rules Number 2:
-All teams have the option to submit an advanced video of their running car up to 30 days ahead of the start of the competition.
20 bonus points will be awarded for submitting on the deadline date, for each additional day before this deadline an additional point will be awarded, up to a maximum total of 50 points.
The video must show the car completed with all bodywork and include clips demonstrating the presence of all safety features (driver harness, head rest, impact attenuator, brake over travel switch).
A member of your academic staff must sign off to say that all systems demonstrated/shown in the video are indeed functional and the final versions intended for competition.

The problem with 90% of teams that DNF, or worse, DNS at comp, is that they worry too much about the wrong things. Chasing fractions in performance instead of reliability and timeliness.
Offering a minimum weight will take some of the pressure off weight saving, so corners won't be cut where they shouldn't be.
Offering Bonus points for being able to demonstrate a running car in advance of the competition (but about as late as any good team should be looking to have a completed car), will add even more emphasis on the time pressures this sort of project entails.


A few preemptive arguments.

-Why 200kg?
200kg is about right for a basic space-frame non-aero car, that doesn't break the bank and is relatively easy to manufacture.

-Most of the teams that break down don't build cars less than 200kg as it is.
This is true. But they'd like to. Most of these teams are in the 200-250kg region. Currently each year they talk about making their car as light as possible, so the next year can go even lighter, and ultimately make that 175kg car. If they know they can't go below 200kg, they won't be pushing so hard to cut mass out of every single system.
A lot of teams in the 175-200kg region, with mostly well built cars breakdown more than they should (you know who you are). They go from top 10 at one comp, to bottom half the next. They are inconsistent because each year they try to shave that little bit extra weight to make their car that little bit faster. Ultimately they probably end up weighing the same because they fixed reliability issues with weight in one area, while doing the opposite in another, continuing the cycle.

-But if there's no longer a drive to save as much weight, won't it make choosing an engine easier? Everyone will just run 4 cylinders! This competition is supposed to be about having total freedom of design choices.
Firstly, I don't think they will, I've seen plenty of singles and twins over 200kg, especially full aero cars.
Secondly, as for the total freedom of design choice argument, I think that's a bit ridiculous. It's an engineering competition; real world engineering is flooded with restriction and limitations. Yes, it's good to give lots of freedom so all the cars aren't the same, but we already have a pointless maximum displacement rule, which limits choice for no good reason. As I've said I don't think this will limit choice, perhaps some teams will sway a different way, but in the end haven't 4cylinders' proven to be more reliable anyway? Isn't that what we want?

-Bonus points mean a team could theoretically score more than 1000
Yes, so? Team with most point wins. How does that change anything?

-Demonstrate break over-travel in a video? You could just film someone hitting a non-wired in switch, with someone off camera hitting the master switch to cut the power. What about all the safety features, they could just mock them up so save time.
Yes, but that would be cheating, and for so little gain (how long does it take to wire in a single switch? Not 24 hours). Plus they've had a member of the academic staff sign it off; in most cases, if they were found to have lied this would have severe consequences for their job, they wouldn't take the risk.

-But what about dry vs. wet weight? What if some teams have empty tanks and no oil?
I'm not interested in discussing the semantics of this, that's not the point. Ultimately you have to be over 200kg at all times during the comp, be that in scrutineering, before design judging, or in parc ferme after endurance. Heck, it wouldn't be hard to have some roll on roll off corner weights set up at the entrance/exit of each event (although that might be excessive).

[rory.gover]

Build a 150kg car, put 50 kg of tungsten right below the CG. Better yet, have it adjustable so you put it rearward and high (maximise long. load transfer and attempt to lift front wheels) for acceleration, and then low and under CG for every other event.

I think the intent here is fine, though I believe it would just introduce a different fine-tuning objective.

[BillCobb]

Allow me to add, based on my experience, that choosing a smooth driver/operator can be an important factor in vehicle durability. Someone who is hard on the steering, throttle, brakes, tires and suspension springs will cost you in long runs. The reward(s) for longevity are big for ANY product design.

[Pat Clarke]

Dunk, it has been my experience that most of the cars that break or don't start are already over 200kg.
Any minimum weight rule is flawed because of the various car designs. A composite, 10" car with a single cylinder engine vs
a spaceframe, turbo 600/4 on 13" wheels and with a full aero package can not be bunched together.
Those choosing a lightweight, low power engine do so to save weight...don't ask them to add 50kg of ballast and become instantly uncompetitive.
Several competitions, including FSG, already have the requirement to submit a video of the running car.
The old dodge of submitting a dry car (even to the extent of empty batteries) was identified long ago.
At FSG there are penalties if your car weight changes significantly during the event...and they do additional weighing!

Remember, FS/FSAE is an engineering competition with a motorsport theme, not a motorsport event.
The intent is that you make your mistakes and cockups before you are inflicted on some poor employer.
That seems to work well as the lesson learned by all those members of the DNF teams is KISS!

Pat

[sidkash14]

Remember, FS/FSAE is an engineering competition with a motorsport theme, not a motorsport event.
The intent is that you make your mistakes and cockups before you are inflicted on some poor employer.

Pat

Yep! This statement is so simple that people often forget what it actually means.

I think we often get lost in the thought of purely focusing on the competition itself, rather than the larger purpose the competition is serving - Aero/Auto Industry.
I'd rather have the students screw up in FSAE, than screw up on a large vehicle that's getting into mass production.
FSAE is probably one of the best opportunities students get to try and fail (several times over). The 'failure' part is critical for learning. I don't think we should mitigate failure by curbing the challenge of learning.

Just my $0.02

/Sid

[JulianH]

Fully agree with Pat. (Could be the first time I think )

The 200kg rule kills the "Delft cars". Even if you can put heavy stuff very low in the car, you will see the massive power downside of a single-cylinder. I think they won't be competitive anymore.
I think that kills a lot of the possiblities.

The "present your car X days before competition" is a great rule. I like how it is used in FSG. Maybe it is possible to be a more strict on this and give out penalties.
What I don't like with your rule is that it would promote even shorter Engineering cycles, less imagination and more "carry over". Teams should push it also between the years!

Julian

[JT A.]

I agree with the pre-competition video idea. I have heard that the competition in Japan has some kind of rule about that and it has been successful. The points bonus is an idea that I haven't heard before, but I think it would be a good thing.

Minimum weight rule, I don't think will be effective. As others have said, a big proportion of the cars that fail endurance are already over 200kg. The problem with it is, being 200+kg does not guarantee that all the weight has been budgeted appropriately into every critical part for equal & sufficient safety factors. There's just no way around the fact that ultimately, if you want to see higher endurance success rates, it depends on the teams to do better engineering. A single minimum weight regardless of engine type, chassis type, wheel size, presence of wings, etc, is very arbitrary too. A car that's 190kg could add a 10kg wing package to meet minimum weight, does that make it any more likely to complete endurance? No, likely the opposite. A 200kg minimum weight would also kill some design freedom and make certain concepts uncompetitive, which I think is a bad thing.

[Dunk Mckay]

I'm not denying that a 200kg weight limit make certain designs uncompetitive. It absolutely does. My argument is: so what?

The aero limitations opened up a number of years ago, all of a sudden you had to have aero to be competitive.
They've been constrained back a little since then, but other than by default, I don't think it's possible to win a competition without a proper aero package.
That's a a change that basically ruled out any teams that didn't have the resources (money, skills or manpower) to build a design concept with an aero package.

So "killing" certain design concepts is no justification not to change things.
If anything, in this case, it would probably level the field a little. Decent smaller engines are harder to come by, especially for teams in certain parts of the world.


Additionally, based on 200kg it only really kills the the design concepts of teams that currently reiterate the same successful design every year. If the teams really are as good as their car, and not just resting on the laurels of those that came before, then changing their concept shouldn't be an issue.

Pat, as I stated in my opening post, the cars that fail the most are indeed already over 200kg. But these teams have all been lead to believe, by the culture of the competition, that mass is really important. I don;t know of many officials doing much to dissuade that idea. Weighing in immediately before Design judging at FSG for example is extremely misleading. All else being equal, and within a reasonable mass range (180-250kg) a kilo is worth maybe 1-2 points at comp, based on dynamic events. But in design judging it can really depend on the judges; I don't think any DJ would award points for intentionally having a heavy car, but many would penalise you for not trying to be as light as possible.
At least with some sort of limit, the discussion does from: "Why didn't you try to have the lightest car possible?" to "Why didn't you aim for the 200kg limit?" Which I think is a much more interesting conversation.

Also from the whole ballast point of view. The question becomes: "I see you can built a very lightweight car. But is ballast really the best use of the remaining mass available?"
(I can think of a few ways that would increase performance much more than ballast that are currently legal).



If we really are saying that allowing design freedom is an untouchable objective, second only to safety requirements, then there are pages and pages of rules that need to be stripped away. Rules that are far more restrictive than a minimum weight limit, that don't offer new, different challenges but simply close doors on different opportunities and bias the competition towards teams with more resource who build the same car year after year.

The 200kg mass limit wouldn't need to be fixed either, it along with a few other specific variables (e.g. aero packaging) could be adjusted every couple of years as a matter of course. So no team would be able to sit back and relax with their carry over concept, simply tweaking it for each minor rules change.
In some cases this does play into the hands of teams with the resource to invest in new development every year. But on the flip side, on occaision, a cheaper, heavier, simpler car, with no aero, would be given a fighting chance.

[JT A.]

So "killing" certain design concepts is no justification not to change things.
If anything, in this case, it would probably level the field a little. Decent smaller engines are harder to come by, especially for teams in certain parts of the world.

Of course it would level up the field. Kill off all the design concepts until there is only 1 left (make FSAE a spec series) and the field would be more level than it's ever been. The question is, why would you want this for an educational design competition? This isn't racing. There are no fans that want to see an even race. There are no competing OEM's funding the series that all want to see their brands win. The goal of this competition was never to have all the teams finish as close together as possible, nor should it be. The goal was to give students and engineering challenge, and then see how well their design compares to other teams in a competitive environment. If there is a huge gap in how good of a job teams do, the points/results should reflect that.

Additionally, based on 200kg it only really kills the the design concepts of teams that currently reiterate the same successful design every year. If the teams really are as good as their car, and not just resting on the laurels of those that came before, then changing their concept shouldn't be an issue.

Teams reiterating the same design over and over is an entirely separate issue than the original topic of "how to get more teams to finish endurance". I agree with you in spirit, that teams have been able to successfully use the same formula for too many years, and trying to shake it up would be a good thing. And if they really are as good as their past results indicate, they will adapt and be just as successful again. But prescribing the design of the car in the rules is not the way to do it. Leave the design of the car as unregulated as possible, and change the event format or point allocations. Then see how the designs change in response. Make the acceleration distance twice as long. Make skidpad only 1 direction, and teams aren't told which direction until they enter they dynamic area, then they have 5 minutes to adjust and get in line. Revamp the cost event to make it more representative of the actual cost of the car. These kind of changes will make teams change their designs & adapt if they want to be successfull, but they have to use their own intelligence to figure out how, instead of just "the rulebook says we have to design our car to this concept now, so that's what we'll do".

Also I get the sense that you're targeting specific teams / a specific concept with this rule idea. Maybe you're a little bitter that they've won so much with "the same car". But take a look at how many teams reiterate the same concept every year and DON'T win. They keep making 4 cylinder, 13" tire, 200kg cars every year despite getting their butt kicked on a yearly basis by a better concept. They're re-iterating just as much as the winning teams, they're just reiterating an inferior concept and doing a worse job of it. It doesn't make any logical sense to try and target the teams that are reiterating a good concept and winning, and force them into an inferior concept (allowing the teams that already use an inferior concept to just keep doing what they're doing) in an attempt to make everything more level. Let's say hypothetically we have 45% of the teams that keep carrying over concept A every year, 45% of teams keep carrying over concept B every year, and 10% actually trying significantly different concept changes. why do you think it's better or more fair to arbitrarily decide that concept A needs to be shaken up and forced into designing concept B to just to prove that they can do something other than copy the same car every year? But the teams that have always built concept B just get to keep carrying over their design. What is that proving? Why not shake up the competition in a way that makes EVERYONE re-evaluate their concept?

[Claude Rouelle]

The focus of this thread slightly evolved from the weight - reliability relation to the reasons why so little number of cars finished the endurance.

For me the main reason of lack of reliability is not low weight (if anything it is the other way around; heavy cars are less reliable). It is simpler than that: most of the teams spend too much time and allocate too much relative resources in concept, simulation, drawing, manufacturing and assembling their car and not enough in testing. Period.

Formula one teams with as much a 1/2 billion $ budget and as much as 800 (mostly experienced and skilled) people still manage to break things in the recent 8 days of Barcelona tests. But there are still Formula Student guys who think that their car have a great chance to be reliable at the competition with practically no testing.

Porsche, Toyota and (until last year) Audi LMP1 teams do perform as many as 7 rehearsals of 24 hours (in fact they run as much as 30 hours for each rehearsal) ahead of Le Mans 24 hours race. Applying the same ratio, it means that a FS team should do 7 times the endurance, that is about 200 km, without problem, before coming the competition.
However that is comparing professionals with students... 500 Km of testing seems to be a bare minimum. But that wont' happen if the car is finished 2 weeks before the competition (if any - some cars are still being assembled in the paddock the day before of the competition)

When I asked students how much test they performed before the competition 80 % of the time I have very vague answer such as “x days” and when I ask them how many hours, how many laps, how many km they really spent on the test track running, I don't get an answer.

Even worse most of them do not have any written record of what did happen during these tests; some don’t even log the number laps ran.

Here is a bit of advice for testing planning and report As design judge, I would like to see test report that includes at the minimum
Date
Weather condition and noticeable change during the day. A 300 $ weather station could be useful
Track and air temperature before and after each run.
Starting setup
What is the test plan: what are we doing today? You rarely won’t achieve all the test goals but you cannot start a test day without a plan. And that is the problem; I know too many FS teams that go to the test track with the goal of “running the car” with no other details…
Cold and hot tire pressure, cold and hot tire temperature (these measurements should be systematic every time the car leaves and come back to the pits)
Time at which the car left and came back to the pits
Number of laps per run
Each lap time
Driver subjective feedback
Setup change
After the test an engineering report that combines driver subjective data and car objective logged data analysis
Conclusion: what went well / what did not go well / why / how can we improve / next action plan. This part of the report should include the car failure analysis and the way the team work together

Last advice: have a plan B (and ideally a plan C) for each plan A for each part of the car. Example: your front wheel hub break. OK, bad drawing, bad manufacturing, shit happen that what this competition is about. 2 solutions A) you go home you redesign the hubs, reorder the material (you would be luck to have it next week), machine again, possible heat or surface treatment . you easily loose 3 to 6 weeks. B) you fit last year upright / hub / caliper and you loose just a few hours. Was that in the plans?