At the last few FSAE and Formula Student competitions, I have witnessed the occurrence of more and more ready-to-go, ready-to-bolt-in impact attenuators with the engineering study also being delivered by the supplier. I have also observed the occurrence of complete suspension parts (hub, upright, wishbones, etc., etc.) bought by teams and bolted onto their car.
In my opinion, this goes completely against the goals of the FSAE / Formula Student competitions that are engineering DESIGN competitions in which the students are challenged to use their education, imagination, and teamwork to understand and define a problem, simulate, design, manufacture, assemble, test, and analyze the performance of the parts or parts assembly they created to get the best possible solution in the “form follows function” spirit.
I believe that the design, manufacturing, assembly, and testing of a Formula Student car cannot be summarized to the assembly of a puzzle. If that was the case, all a team would need is a lot of money to build a competitive Formula student car, although the students would still have to convince the design judges of the why, how, and how much were their engineering choices. Of course, I understand that not all teams have the time, budget, or resources to design and build their own steering wheel, exhaust, or brake discs and calipers. The border between the design and manufacture and bought parts is not well defined by the rules, nor should it be
However, to make things simple and direct, in my design judge opinion, whatever team or teams come with such bolt-in parts—especially suspensions—will have to convince me of their serious analysis, simulation, and validation work in order for me to give them a decent score.