Baltic Open Announcements

[JonMW]

I'm not sure any of us got a pic of that thing. It was too dark, but I'll see what I can find. Will also try to get some other pics postet tonight.

[Mikko Ahola]

Here some pics of HPF006 on fire:

http://hirppa.kuvat.fi/kuvat/BO07

More will be coming soon...

[JR @ CFS]

Doesn't look like he met the 5 second exit rule Reminds me of a time during testing, before which, we had established the 5 second rule was a bit tight, when we had a suspected fire. I think the driver made it out in less than 3 seconds, only after seeing my frantic signals and when he smelt burning. Thankfully only a loose cooling pipe!

[Kimmo Hirvonen]

Now all the photos can be found from the link Mikko put couple of posts before.
Some videos may be found from that address tomorrow.
I try to put up also a zip-file of all the photos in near future.

From the metadata of those pictures you can surely see that it took around 8s to get out and there's a reason for that also.
Let's just say that a solution that was made in few minutes time in between of acceleration and autox to keep us going, turned out to be almost crusial when our driver jumped out from the car. Some may find the cause of this from the photos I uploaded...

[TomF]

From the Delft team, great work on organising a great event again! It was a great race and a great party, despite the fact that not all of us made it to the party...

I believe there are plans for us to organise a Dutch Open or North Sea open next year, but we will have to think about the seriousness of that and your willingness to travel to Holland. But we would like to open up a discussion to see wether you would be interested! Since we did finish up somewhere at the back of the field again we may make a few changes to the events that will be run. We are open for suggestions like fuel economy, skid-pad, acceleration including slaloms, and presentation events.

But there is still plenty of time to think about that! I would like to thank the Chalmers guys once again for their effort and the great race and party,

Cheers!

[Kimmo Hirvonen]

Good that you brought this up. I know we spoke about the next Baltic Open place after the competition but I think it's better to make decisions without the "Viru Valge" bottle next to you.

As they tend to say it in here, I'll throw in my two cents.

Baltic Open has been a "Baltic" Open this far. Organizing Baltic Sea cities have been: Helsinki, Luleå, Stockholm, Helsinki and Gothenburg. I know that some think it should be this way for eternity but I think it would be refreshing to experience "Baltic Open - Relocated".
But it includes atleast couple of "ifs":
-Accomodation should be for free.
-And it wouldn't hurt that the track would be free also.

Baltic Open's original idea was to have fun with minimum cost. This is purely because in the end of the season, all the teams are low on money and I can e.g. tell that Helsinki team is in debt to a certain "trust" at this moment. So, another FSG-budget spent on Baltic Open would be just too much.

Of course I can't speak on behalf of all the Helsinki guys but on return trip I got the expression that if free track and accomodation can be provided, most of us will do the trip.

What comes to changing the rules, I'm a bit more conservative.
If you have a space for skid pad, go for it. And nothing against to a new type of acceleration. But for static events, thumbs down.
A short presentation for school personnel and sponsors could be a good thing but it shouldn't be calculated to the points of the overall competition.
After all, you've seen how tight the schedule has been for the couple of years and new events would change it to a two day competition almost for sure. And I'm pretty sure that that would cut down the participants quite some. What I mean is that if people have to take a week off from their work, they might think it's not worth it. Now two days was enough.

OK, I think that was enough from me. What do the other teams think?

To this end I may add that now there's a small video of the fire as well:
http://hirppa.kuvat.fi/kuvat/BO07/

There's also a zip-file of all the stuff found from that site, full size:
http://hirppa.kuvat.fi/BO07.zip

[TomF]

I maybe should have pointed out the remarks about the change of events with a large sarcastic wink, cause allthough it would give us better chance of winning the event it is off course not that much fun to have all kinds of presentations as it is to race. At the moment I can not give any estimations on free accomodation and track, where especially the latter may be difficult to arrange. However I think we will be keen on doing a great effort to arrange such deals, since we know the trip alone is already quite expensive. That being said, please feel free to comment, put in suggestions and the like.

Let's hear about it!

By the way, great fotos once again Kimmo!

[Kimmo Hirvonen]

OK, you got me. Sarcastic smile would've helped. It's just that last year we actually thought of slalom acceleration and super skid pad (figure eight with humongous diameter) but didn't go for it. Also Chalmers thought of presentation for Volvo/Koenigsegg guys. So new event wouldn't probably hurt.
Now that said, next year you will have skid pad-endurance and slalom acceleration with cones 5m from each other.

Thanks for the compliments. Luckily I was on the right spot when that a.k.a Bat-Mobile got those after burns going.

[Gerben van der Lei]

mmm we're not quite done designing the sauna. Do you hae some thermo literature on how to optimize the sauna?

Thank you guys from chalmers for organising the event! I had great fun idling the car around the track.

For sure we would like to organise an event here in holland. But it all depends on the other teams on how far they are willing to travel. Offcourse it would be a low cost high fun event. (We are allready developping some nice ideas over here).

Nice pictures kimmo!

Cheers! Gerben

Delft

[JR @ CFS]

Just throwing in my two cents.

We did indeed want to incorporate a lot more this year and this first and foremost, was to provide something back to our sponsors and to show them that we are professionals on the business side of things as well as the engineering side.

This was met with HUGE opposition from the traditional and founding teams of the Baltic Open.

So, rather than end the tradition, we decided to continue it and as far as I am aware the track was quite open and free flowing suiting the bigger capacity cars I for one am in full support of this after driving this years FS track which was a complete nightmare for the, ah hem, bulkier cars among the pack.

I am pretty certain, after the daily parties from the Delft guys, that it would be a cool event. It would be more expensive for the Swedish teams to make the journey, but it could open the event up to the "mainland" european teams.

I for one believe that the BO should develop into something bigger, possibly an official event...why should we have to travel to germany Scandanavian industry is quite sizeable and with the right approach from organisers, could be a MAJOR supporter! But who will take the initiative to take this step. I for one have my hand firmly in the air if anyone else was willing to take it on