FSAE World Ranking: Who is Number 1 worldwide?

[Bemo]

Originally posted by Markus:
Coming from a team that's recently had more luck than performance?

What is there to be misunderstood? This is propably one of the most unpolite statements ever written on this forum as it basically sais that a team who has won more than 10 competitions within 5 years has more luck than performance. Do you REALLY expect people from that team to stay calm here?

[RenM]

I dont doubt that Tallinn is a good team and i honestly believe you that they were very fast, but that is not the point. Winning without scoring in Fuel is an extreme exception that cant be taken as normal when you are making rules.

Given the fact that you have 2 equally good teams: Both score well in statics and both will be similarly fast in acceleration, skidpad and possibly autocross. In an event running the normal FSAE rules the team that gets zero points from economy will have to go 14% faster then the team that gets 100 points. 14% means 7!!!! seconds on a 50 seconds lap. With FSG Rules its still 6 seconds. That ridiculous. Plus it makes economy totaly worthless for C-cars as they wont score any points anyway.


And to hopefully end this discussion and calm everyone down a bit, i did a calculation of endurance points based on the lap times published by FSG and not based on my believe. Of course we can only have a look at GFRs first driver and we dont have any information about GFRs cones but it will still be sufficient. GFRs first driver needed 676s. Including cones the Rennteam finished endurance in 1382s which results in an average of 691s per driver. Given GFR won the Endurance with a similar pace from the second driver they would of course score 325 points and the Rennteam would have gotten 300 points which is 21 points less then they actually got at FSG.

With Endurance Scores and without Efficiency:
Stuttgart: 768 Points
GFR: 705 Points

Now we dont know how much fuel GFR has used, but its quite safe to say, that they would have not been able to reduce Rennteams score by 60 points.

[Markus]

Originally posted by Bemo:
What is there to be misunderstood? This is propably one of the most unpolite statements ever written on this forum as it basically sais that a team who has won more than 10 competitions within 5 years has more luck than performance. Do you REALLY expect people from that team to stay calm here?

Usually people are willing to stand their own game. So I expect people are able to receive similar statements than they give out.

My statement was intentionally provocative and I admit maybe a bit too harsh. But it was based on similar "facts" than RenM's statement about Tallinn and FSH. Seems it served it's purpose maybe a bit too well?

Originally posted by RenM:
I dont doubt that Tallinn is a good team and i honestly believe you that they were very fast, but that is not the point. Winning without scoring in Fuel is an extreme exception that cant be taken as normal when you are making rules.

Given the fact that you have 2 equally good teams: Both score well in statics and both will be similarly fast in acceleration, skidpad and possibly autocross. In an event running the normal FSAE rules the team that gets zero points from economy will have to go 14% faster then the team that gets 100 points. 14% means 7!!!! seconds on a 50 seconds lap. With FSG Rules its still 6 seconds. That ridiculous. Plus it makes economy totaly worthless for C-cars as they wont score any points anyway.

I'd say Tallinn and KIT are on quite similar level of performance. Of course winning with zero points in fuel can't be taken as normal but it's still far from impossible. That's what I replied to, it can and has been done.

Under the 2012 rules a good combustion car could have scored up to ~60pts in fuel like JulianH stated. Together with endurance and cost scoring these seem quite balanced out. If mixed events will continue to use similar point scaling in 2013 we will see how it works out.

The FSG2013 efficiency scoring scheme definetly makes winning a lot more difficult for combustion cars and would thus be unfair.

On the subject the larger spread of efficiency points in FSE makes things more fair in combined WRL so seperate events and mixed events should use a different efficiency formula to make comparison more reasonable.

And to hopefully end this discussion and calm everyone down a bit, i did a calculation of endurance points based on the lap times published by FSG and not based on my believe. Of course we can only have a look at GFRs first driver and we dont have any information about GFRs cones but it will still be sufficient. GFRs first driver needed 676s. Including cones the Rennteam finished endurance in 1382s which results in an average of 691s per driver. Given GFR won the Endurance with a similar pace from the second driver they would of course score 325 points and the Rennteam would have gotten 300 points which is 21 points less then they actually got at FSG.

With Endurance Scores and without Efficiency:
Stuttgart: 768 Points
GFR: 705 Points

Now we dont know how much fuel GFR has used, but its quite safe to say, that they would have not been able to reduce Rennteams score by 60 points.

Efficiency would account for around 30pts as an estimate. I didn't do any throughout calculations about this debate as it was not my intent. So I based my estimations pretty heavily on autocross times and 2011 scores spread. Usually autocross and endurance laptimes correlate quite well but it seems that not in this case.

And even with the usual strategy of running the faster driver last you're right, Stuttgart would have come out on top.

[TMichaels]

RenM, Bemo, Markus:
Leave your team vendetta behind and get back on topic please.

Under the 2012 rules a good combustion car could have scored up to ~60pts in fuel like JulianH stated. Together with endurance and cost scoring these seem quite balanced out. If mixed events will continue to use similar point scaling in 2013 we will see how it works out.

The FSG2013 efficiency scoring scheme definetly makes winning a lot more difficult for combustion cars and would thus be unfair.

As said many times before:
This is a question that depends on the approach and personal opinion:

Do we want technically feasible rules or do we want balanced rules? Both is sadly not possible with E and IC in the same class.

[Markus]

I'm quite convinced that only time will tell. There is already a quite big mix of technically different things in the rules and as we know they aren't necessarely that well balanced. There is no question that mixed events will continue to exist, especially smaller ones (FSA, FSH, FN), so those competitions have to work on keeping the competition feasible. And hopefully they will succeed in it still within (most of) FSAE rules.

Tobias, do you still think you could give that 3rd WR list a shot to see if it makes any sense?

Bemo, my offer for beer is still valid. Shoot me a PM if you want to redeem it. RenM, you're also invited.

[TMichaels]

Tobias, do you still think you could give that 3rd WR list a shot to see if it makes any sense?

Yes, I plan to, but currently my time is eaten up by other things. So I have to ask for some patience

[MegaDeath]

Something interesting I thought I'd bring up. With such a busy European FS schedule coming up this summer, would any consideration be given to adjusting the competitiveness factor for some of those events that are either being run at the same time or within a couple days of another event? I ask this because there will be a big congregation of top level teams from throughout the world at FSG, and in the 30 or so days after there are (by my count) 5 more official or un-official events taking place throughout Europe. I think the problem could be that a team could compete and finish top 3 or 5 in Germany and then go to another completion a few days where there isn't the abundance of top teams and easily win, because the other top teams are spread out competing at other events or just went home. This makes me think specifically of Monash who has won at FSAE-A and actually dropped in the ranking because a lack of competitive teams. It is never a hugely significant drop, but I feel that if the current growth of Formula Student/SAE continues to grow at the rate it has been in the past few years the World ranking system will quickly become inaccurate if top teams from all over the world are competing against each other at a lower percentage of events per year than they currently do.

I know this was supposed to be a bit of a "Suggest something you would change" type of thread, but I figured I would throw this idea out there for people to think about.

[TMichaels]

Thanks for pointing that out. I have not been thinking about this effect.

Thinking about it, it should still be covered with the C-factor. The WRL expects that a top team scores better with a lack of competition, which sounds reasonable to me in general.

The concept of the WRL is to give an estimated number of points that the respective team is able to score at an event corrected with its C-factor.
Therefore due to the lack of WRL top teams at FSAE-A, it was expected (by the WRL algorithm) that Monash scores more points than they actually did. Btw: Monash did not drop after FSAE-A, but they lost 4 points. The WRL algorithm assumed that they would score 797,68/0,8751 = 930,67pts at FSAE-A, but they "only" managed to score 899pts. Thus they lost 4 points to correct the assumption in the right direction.

Please don't overestimate the accuracy of the WRL. It gives a good hint on the Top20 in the world and maybe even in the actual ranking if you take an error of +-4 ranks into account. But only by the definition and assumptions of the used algorithms.

But this is of course always the case for WRLs such as ATP or F1. Thus the best on top of these ranking lists and the entire ranking is always defined by the assumptions that are explicitly and implicitly made by the algorithm used. Currently F1 awards 25pts for a victory, 18 pts for 2nd and 15pts for 3rd place. If you slightly adjust these numbers then Alonso would have been world champion this year and I am quite sure that nobody is able to really argument why the 2nd place gets 18pts instead of 19 etc.

Change the definitions and assumptions and you change the entire ranking.

[SoonerJack]

With Lincoln and Silverstone "done" in 2013, I was wondering when we can see the new World Ranking. I think at least Silverstone could mix up the combustions.

[TMichaels]

It will certainly be updated prior FSG.