"Official Results"

[Fergus Wilson]

Dear All,

The top six placings were:

Wollongong
RMIT
Western Australia
Queensland
RIT
Auckland

At least that's how I remember it!!!

It was pretty close right till the end, with Wollongong about 20 points ahead of 2nd, with 2nd and 3rd about ONE point apart.

Official results will be posted on www.sae-a.com.au in the next couple of days, as will pictures of the event.

Fergus Wilson
FSAE-A 2004 Scoring Advisor/Official Photographer/UOW Alumni

PS: Other things you might have missed:
UOW hitting the wall on the practice track on Friday
Adelaide winning design
UWA's Kinematic suspension
Ticuna/RIT's "altercation" in the enduro
Wollongong beating RMIT by 0.01sec in Autocross
Adelaide winning the "Bling Bling" Award
ADFA's car with the "bullet holes"
Newcastle winning the "practice track award"
Deakin's single cylinder sidewinder
A lot of drinking at the after-party!!!

[Denny Trimble]

Congratulations to all the teams! I expect everybody will be sleeping for the next week or so.

If anybody has photos they'd like posted on the web, feel free to email them to me: dennyt at u.washington.edu

I can't wait to see pictures and read more about the cars!

[BryanH]

Point gap 1st to 3rd was actually 10 points!
RMIT had it in the bag until the engine was slow to start and then stalled after the driver change and on the way to the out gate and lost several laps before it restarted.
Slow cranking was the culprit, possibly my fault or dead cell in battery.
Winning twice in one year is not meant to be easy.....
RO4 was easily the fastest car on the track with Mark making up a half lap,passing W,gong and putting another 20sec into them before the driver change. The car likes to be driven very straight, looks exactly like an F3 car in on track behaviour. can be pushed very hard without getting ragged, eating cones etc.
Interesting to note that when both cars were close together W,gong turbo car had more initial low speed accel. but RO4 had more top end accel. Maybe aero drag is more significant in these low torque cars than we thought. (it was a fairly fast track)
Both cars are on laptimes a step up from the rest, but W,gongs car cooks it's rear tyres, big time in the 2nd enduro which resulted in serious cone eating and entertainment for the crowd! Maybe won't be a problem in sunny Detroit. btw RMIT used 2.54 litres to Gong 4.7L
RMIT 67bhp/180kg Gong 90bhp/219kg
With another 5 months development on these cars Detroit will be interesting........

[Charlie]

Wow, congrats to UOW for another victory, and also to RMIT for what I'd consider a much more impressive accomplishment for thier single than even the FS win.

Very interested to see these cars perform in Detroit, hope I can be there.

[V2 - Italy]

Congratulations to the winner and to all the teams.

I'd like to know the endurance track lenght, the average speed, and the best lap time of the main teams,
waiting for the official results.

Daniele

Visit the RACE OF CHAMPIONS home page, really a beautiful event at the Paris Stadium...
http://www.waypoint.be/rocevent2004/

[Eddie Martin]

It was an amazing competition, the best run and organised sae event Australia has had. The venue was great, full credit to everybody at sae-a and the consortium.

I think from memory the final points were Wollongong 853, RMIT 836 and UWA 834. This is just from memory and they may be a bit wrong.

The Wollongong boys did have a crash in the practice track on thursday that damaged the crush zone and nose cone but it was fixed reasonably quickly, didn't look very pretty though. Even though i'm a bit biased the uow car was consistently the fastest during the enduro's. Obviously the car/team won't be going to the states in May but the 2nd, 3rd and 4th placed cars will be.

Rmit had a great little car, deserved to be higher than 6th in design. The design judges had a lot of "discussion" about the final results of the design event. Hester and all the guys did an amazing job, they are going to be a force in America next May.

UWA had many innovations with a new "kinetics" suspension system and variable length intake runners, very impressive car. They had a problem restarting at the driver change in the 1st enduro but came back strong in the sceond enduro. With the experience from the usa 04 comp under their belts they should do very well at the usa 05 comp.

Deakin had a 160kg sidewinder with a ktm single cylinder engine, they had some problems though the weekend and I don't think they made it out on track. Adelaide won design but from memory didn't complete the enduro. Monash had problems with their carbon tub and couldn't compete. Jarrod and all the guys put in a huge effort. The guys from Auckland had a great first year car that was competitive all weekend.

The autocross turned into a shoot out between RMIT and Wollongong, with Wollonong just coming out on top. Both cars were in the 39 second bracket, with the next best team in the 42 second bracket i think.

The first enduro was full of drama. Many cars spun on the crest of the hill in the track. The anu car hit the rit car, damaging both. It was a shame that such heavy contact occurred at an sae event but luckily both drivers were unhurt. The qut car spun and hit a barrier at a marshal's station after the driver misinterpreted the course and was a bit too aggressive at the controls. Again luckily nobody was hurt. Both times the track safety procedures worked well.

The final enduro was spectacular. Rmit chased down the gong in the first stint, with both cars setting some very impressive lap times. When rmit went to their number two driver and wollongong changed to their number one driver the tables turned with dangerous dave from wollongong passing rmit twice. Dave did get very tired about half way through his stint so couldn't push as hard. UWA were held up as lots of cones were being hit all over the course. Kev Hayward from wa struggled to get a clean run because of this. I couldn't believe how many cones were hit by the drivers out there, the marshals were kept running all day to replace cones.

Hopefully some more international teams head down to Australia next year and the Australian cars go well overseas.

Eddie Martin
UOW Racing Alumni 01 - 04 / FSAE-A Volunteer – Track Marshal.

[madman]

Thanks for the replies guys. Those of us a long way from home and not able to make it appreciate the detailed info. Makes us wish we were studying again. Maybe I'll do a Kev and become a permanent FSAE student.

Anyone got some piccies from the event posted?

Thanks,
Brian

PS. Eddie - good write up. UOW not going to the states?

[IsheeM]

Could someone elaborate on UWA's "kinetics" suspension system?

Thanks,

[Chris Clarke]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR> The anu car hit the rit car, damaging both. It was a shame that such heavy contact occurred at an sae event but luckily both drivers were unhurt. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Can any elaborate on this. Why did it happen? What specific damage did each car incur? What was the marshals response to this?? i.e. were there any changes for the second endurance?

Does anybody know if this is the first collision between two FSAE cars?

Chris

[Mark Bacchetti]

Pictures?!?!?!