FSAE World Ranking: Who is Number 1 worldwide?

[Hector]

Originally posted by DART-CG:
Without something like that the list is maculation and too much influenced by "luck", sorry to say that.
Or can any team out here assert that they finished all of their last six events???

Seriously? A very large part of racing is luck, just like any sport or competition. And when you lose, even if it is due to luck, you go down a position.

Florida's football team had ever opportunity to complain about "bad luck" that knocked them down several places in the BCS when a PAT was blocked. Instead of complaining, they promised to play harder. I think their performance last night is a pretty good indication of their dedication.

[Hector]

I will also note that this ranking system will be the center of many heated discussions for years to come, just like the BCS.

May the /rants begin!

/playoff system needed for FSAE

[VinceL]

Or can any team out here assert that they finished all of their last six events???

We have finished our last 7 events with perfect reliability, hence the 4th place ranking.

Obviously these rankings have to be taken with a grain of salt. The term 'best team' can have many definitions, it's something that is impossible to quantify.

DART-CG is right in that it might be a little incorrect that one failure can put a team down at least 10 places (Although Stuttgart managed to survive their failure in FSG to emerge as 1st). Maybe a remedy for this could be to allow for a team's worst event to be eliminated.

All in all I think the rankings are positive. As MalcolmG mentioned it gives a team something to aim for.

[Frank "Ruska" Roeske]

Good to see how the discussion starts, which was the main reason for the topic.

In our opinion the ranking is the answer to a questions which is ask since we have more than 1 competition worldwide: How is the best?

The last 3 years the Fisita Worldcup tries to answer this question. Obviously this wasn´t the answer everybody was looking for.

So a still unanswered question. For us the answer should be based on a ranking list, comparing to the ATP (Tennis World ranking) or the PGA Tour. Every Player can´t play any Tournament.

So the team behind the ranking list made uncounted numbers of calculations with different factors etc. and developed the formula.

This one is not fixed and can be changed during the next years. For that we need the input of the discussions.

Neverless i think this ranking is the best attempt to answer the question everybody is asking.

I need to answer a couple of other questions, teams asking in preparation to next years event.
But please go on with the discussion.

Frank

[BryanH]

I must have come across this just after it Frank posted it as there were no replies, didn't lay still for lomg! I had a read the stats back to the mid nineties and it seems a pretty fair assesment, Someone has put some serious effort into creating an accurate rating system. Must have something to do with all that snow and ice and long nights.....
Anyway it seems pretty accurate, RMIT were ranked #1 from late 2006 until late 08 and that sits fine with me
Any team could climb into the top 10 fairly quickly with no dnf,s and good consistant pointscores.
Cheers

[Bemo]

Here are a few thoughts from me. In my opinion you can't critisize that it pulls you down, if you don't finish some events, although you have a fast car. That's motorsport. Of course a lot of accidents are just bad luck (for example if a chain brakes). But very often there are also reasons for failures, for example a lack of testing time, because a car was finished to late.
And also the number of the events is ok I think. If you just participate in the three European events, you have six events in two years. There are a lot of teams who do that.
At the beginning of this threat someone asked for points per dollars spent. That's nonsense, because first of all it is impossible to get to know that. And there are a lot of cars, which are much more expensive than ours I think. If you take a look at it, you won't see that much of fancy expensive features, most of it is pretty much standard.
In my opinion this ranking is a great thing (not only because we are first). The only thing I dislike is that the last event counts extremely much compared to older ones. RMIT got from 1 to 22 at one single competition. It was a very bad competition for them in Australia but they schould have stayed in the top10 I think. On the other hand the factor for competitivness of the event is 0.85 in the worst case. That means that the first place of RMIT in 2007 at FS UK doesn't count very much, but a first in Japan or Italy very much, if you haven't done any competitions since then.

[Wesley]

I never said it'd be easy to get the budget information. I just would like to see it. We have a low budget comparatively, and we do okay. It would give you more information. Cost of the car is only part of the budget - the rest affects what kind of research you can do.

I don't expect it to affect the rankings, I just want to see how much money the top teams operate on.

[RacingManiac]

One thing I think one should do is not just take a look at the top 10 Frank posted. The actual list is a 425 page PDF file of ALL the schools competed in ALL the events since 1991, and how they are ranked based on their formula after every single one of the events. The formula puts emphasis on how much competition a school competes, and how recent their latest event was. There was a saying I believe that you are only as good as your last race, and this system sorta puts a premium on that. But then they also tried to balance that out by assigning a competitiveness scale of each event, so a team who's first in an event with 20 cars is not ranked the same as a team who's first compare with 120 cars. But I think its a testiment to the competitiveness world wide that all the events is at a very high standard now. As such all the events will have their results counted well in the system. And as such the more you race the better you do on this list. Which is why Stuttgart is kicking everyone's butt since they've pretty much went on a tear since 2007 and they've raced in most of the events in the last 2 years.

I think this kinda goes back to that discussion some had here at the forum that should team compete in more events. Back in the day there was only FSAE Michigan, then there were Australasia and UK, now many others are popping up. Consider most big European schools goes to at the minimum all the events in Europe(UK, Germany, Italy), in this ranking they get more chances to score, and with more recent results. Now in NA we have 3 events now as well, although to be fair it's hard to be registered for all 3 since we have entrant caps and you have preferance into which one you are entered first. Granted if you can't be in all the NA events going abroad will be more expensive, but then that might give the business people more to do. I know in our case we have to raise a certain amount every year just so we can race in UK(or now, Germany).

Its nice to see our school is featured well on this list, as it sorta validates our practice of getting a car done early, and test often, so that by competition it is reliable, and drivers are well practiced for what they do. Certainly makes all the sleepless nights in the shop and early mornings for testing seem to be worth something. I am sure VinceL agrees with me on that one...

[Pete Marsh]

It looks like a fantastic system to me, and absolutly should include all your events, good or bad. You make your own luck at events. Ever heard of the 6 P's?
Prior Preperation Prevents Piss Poor Performance

Its a shame for RMIT this wasn't about when they were dominating the world, but I'm sure the new fuel economy rules will make some big changes to the rankings by this time next year!


pete

[Maverik]

Go Gators, I'll take 8th on the world list considering we never get to race outside of Michigan :-(