Formula SAE Michigan 2009 Competition: Pictures, stories & more.

[Drew Price]

The sun has just risen on the day when many of us are travelling to (or are already in) Brooklyn, MI, for the 2009 FSAE-M competition.

This is the second year that FSAE-M is being held at Michigan International Speedway.

See you all there in the next day or so! (Our car will be easy to find - it will be the one made of zip ties.)

http://sirocco.accuweather.com/nx_mosaic_400x300_public/sir/inmaSIRMI_.gif

http://lh5.ggpht.com/_JNlhJgnxXHk/Sglez3o4_GI/AAAAAAAAA64/pbTUn7oHwB4/s800/2009%20Competition%20011.jpg

Best,
Drew

[Mikey Antonakakis]

Oh boy, just a graphics project, final paper for music, and final exam for math left, along with packing my belongings for the summer, then packing the truck! Hopefully we'll be rolling out of here before 7pm tonight, although that depends on how many people show up to pack the truck. Either way, I can't wait for it to be tonight! See you guys there!

[Drew Price]

Think you guys can make it from Brooklyn to Brooklyn in under 12 hours? (You'll probably cook it through the Lincoln Tunnel, but whatever....) Don't hurt yourselves!



Drew

[t21jj]

I'll take your zip tie challenge. We're currently trying to reassemble the car after paint, and powder coat along with packing the truck and trailer. Should be on the road by tonight.

[Drew Price]

I'll take your re-assembly challenge.

As of 9:30am right now, engine is still not running on the dyno. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_frown.gif

(the shit show continues)



Best,
Drew

[t21jj]

Good luck, we've spent the last year and a half up until spring break fighting engine and computer issues. Now we just halve to figure out how to get the sound down to a point of passing tech (stupid single cylinders).

[Drew Price]

We are using the same muffler as last year, and we were close to failing from induction noise rather than exhaust. Bigger (existant) plenum this year and not having the TB pointed at the mic should cure that. We passed at 110.0db last year.

I'll have an extra of our trick Ti muffler if you guys need to give it a whirl.

Red Bull rep chick should be here any time with our sponsored cases of product for comp, that should liven things up when we start throwing our stuff in the trailer.


EDIT: It just occurred to me to be a little worried that Mikey will beat us there!


Best,
Drew

[t21jj]

We just repacked our muffler (the packing was completely shot) so we'll see how that helps. We were a couple of db away before repacking and we have a couple of other tricks we can try

[Mikey Antonakakis]

Originally posted by Drew Price:
We are using the same muffler as last year, and we were close to failing from induction noise rather than exhaust. Bigger (existant) plenum this year and not having the TB pointed at the mic should cure that. We passed at 110.0db last year.

I'll have an extra of our trick Ti muffler if you guys need to give it a whirl.

Red Bull rep chick should be here any time with our sponsored cases of product for comp, that should liven things up when we start throwing our stuff in the trailer.


EDIT: It just occurred to me to be a little worried that Mikey will beat us there!


Best,
Drew
Haha, I've already downed several sponsored Red Bulls on this second-to-last of many all-nighters (Praying I won't have a reason to stay up all night again until Saturday night once we're there).

That paper is done. Time to learn a semester's worth of math in 90 minutes, woooooo!

The graphics project will get done in Michigan, it isn't due till Thursday http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_razz.gif

Good luck guys!

Oh, we're also going to compete in the zip-tie challange. We have gone through a bag of 1000 pretty quickly.

I've also got a pretty trick muffler setup... we'll still pass noise if the judges can't put the dB meter in the proper position, right? There may be a race car in the way lol.... hopefully it won't be an issue (fingers crossed). You guys can see what I mean at MIS http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

[FF Scott]

So for those waking up and heading to the track tomorrow 1st off good luck and wish I was one of you all but second can you do some research? TUG has "something" on the back of their car that looks like a gear box but Im fairly sure they are using a chain and sprocket (SOP). Can someone figure out wtf that thing is? or maybe someone from TU Graz can tell us! Im very interested and will not be able to get to Mich until Friday afternoon to check it all out.

[rjwoods77]

Just wanted to say go for it Cal Poly SLO. Love the car and the direction you take with the design. Actually dont know if they are there but go for it where ever you are.

[carboneater]

Originally posted by FF Scott:
So for those waking up and heading to the track tomorrow 1st off good luck and wish I was one of you all but second can you do some research? TUG has "something" on the back of their car that looks like a gear box but Im fairly sure they are using a chain and sprocket (SOP). Can someone figure out wtf that thing is? or maybe someone from TU Graz can tell us! Im very interested and will not be able to get to Mich until Friday afternoon to check it all out.

You mean your new car? But in Mich, there is the old one from 2008 - with modifications.
The thing you see is something to go faster round the corner...(sorry for that explanation)

[Drew Price]

Originally posted by rjwoods77:
Just wanted to say go for it Cal Poly SLO. Love the car and the direction you take with the design. Actually dont know if they are there but go for it where ever you are.



Nope, they're attending West this year.



Best,
Drew

[Luniz]

Originally posted by carboneater:
You mean your new car? But in Mich, there is the old one from 2008 - with modifications.
The thing you see is something to go faster round the corner...(sorry for that explanation)

To me it looks like it could be some sort of active/adjustable ARB... Am I right?

[repeatoffender]

Originally posted by Luniz:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by carboneater:
You mean your new car? But in Mich, there is the old one from 2008 - with modifications.
The thing you see is something to go faster round the corner...(sorry for that explanation)

To me it looks like it could be some sort of active/adjustable ARB... Am I right? </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Looks more like active steering / toe control.

Those wheels look smaller too. Remincent of RMIT.

[D Collins Jr]

How's the car count looking this year?

[Patefe]

109 i think...there was 124 inscription and 15 resigned in advance.

[Drew Price]

We have finally given up hope of competing, and have had terminal problems with our engine on the dyno.

We will be in attendance as spectators, see you all tomorrow.



Best,
Drew

[RacingManiac]

ouch, that sucks....

better luck next time...

[Jersey Tom]

I'll be up Saturday. Will be interesting to check things out..

[David-E]

Here are some pictures I have from the first day of MIS, I'll have plenty more tomorrow.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/r...57618118708360/show/ (http://www.flickr.com/photos/rdsphoto/sets/72157618118708360/show/)

[Wesley]

Kick some ass, pirates!

[oz_olly]

Hey David,

Thanks for the pictures, great work. There seems to be a lot of the Cane Creek / Ohlins Double Barrels this year. I haven't spied any Drexler diffs yet though. There are some really nice looking cars there, nice and tidy ARB designs etc. Is Rob Woods old team competing? I am interested to see what they have done with their live axle concept. Hope the weather holds out for you guys.

Cheers

Olly

ACME Racing
UNSW@ADFA

[Kirby]

How many teams running the Aprillia this year?

[Brian Barnhill]

Nice pictures, David. Some nice looking cars out there. Wish I could have made it out this year.

Any other Alumni out there feeling out of place for not scrambling/pulling all nighters followed by a road trip to Michigan? I have the panoramic pictures hanging over my desk at work and keep thinking that I'd rather be poor, stressed out and under-rested and at competition right now then behind my desk!

Good luck to all the teams!

[RacingManiac]

I am going to enjoy being a spectator tomorrow....

[Auerbach]

Brian, I second that feeling as an alum. I already told my boss today would be less productive because I'd be on the forum looking at pics. Another ex-fsae co-worker and I spent the morning reminiscing.

My school (Texas) isn't at MIS, hopefully they'll be making it to Cali.

Good luck to all! Looks like the weather is a little damp?

[2BWise]

Originally posted by Brian Barnhill:
Nice pictures, David. Some nice looking cars out there. Wish I could have made it out this year.

Any other Alumni out there feeling out of place for not scrambling/pulling all nighters followed by a road trip to Michigan? I have the panoramic pictures hanging over my desk at work and keep thinking that I'd rather be poor, stressed out and under-rested and at competition right now then behind my desk!

Good luck to all the teams!

Not quite sure about rather being sleep deprived and depressed, but I do miss all the time spent working on the car. It seems like I've got too much free time anymore.

I will be at MIS though on Saturday. One of the beauties of living so close to Detroit.

[Raphaël Rochette]

Originally posted by RacingManiac:
I am going to enjoy being a spectator tomorrow....

RacingManiac, are you leaving from Toronto? I'm leaving at 2h00 from Ajax. Maybe we could arrange something. Let me know. Can't wait to be there!

[Scrappy]

I think that since this year the awards ceremony, design finals and everything is wrapping up on Saturday night, everybody can afford to party much harder on Saturday night! It doesnt matter how you finish, you can afford to "celebrate" as much as you want on Saturday night.

I will never forget last year in East Lansing on Sunday morning before heading back to MIS for the awards ceremony. I roll out of bed, still feeling it from the night before, and walk into my living room to find Henk, the project manager from Delft sprawled out on my couch in the living room. I ask him "Henk, isnt your team in the design finals? Dont you need to be there?" Knowing that his team was already gone, his reply was "Eh, theyve got it under control." He ended up riding with me and my teammates back to MIS that morning. Talk about a crazy night! http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif

If everybody wanted to get together somewhere Saturday night, East Lansing is a great place to "celebrate". Last year our team, Florida, and Delft had an awesome time in downtown EL. If people are interested and dont mind the drive, Ill put up my phone number and we can hit some bars.

[Maverik]

Drinks in EL? I'm there... just gotta be back for qualifying... (hungover is ok)

[RacingManiac]

Originally posted by Raphaël Rochette:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by RacingManiac:
I am going to enjoy being a spectator tomorrow....

RacingManiac, are you leaving from Toronto? I'm leaving at 2h00 from Ajax. Maybe we could arrange something. Let me know. Can't wait to be there! </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Unfortunetely no...I work in Troy, MI now....

[chavez]

So who's taking pictures?

[Drew Price]

Gorgeous weather today.

Out of 124 registered teams, there are 92 cars on site.

No GM machining trailer, no Lincoln Electric welding truck, no Arvin Merritor mobile lab, no Land & Sea rolling road dyno. Hoosier and Goodyear have trailers and reps.

Seems like lots of run issues, no one's car sounded really happy out on the practice track that I saw today, but I didn't see MUST run http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif

Madison has some wicked camber compliance on their rear suspension (on the practice track at least), Kansas has a really attractive but juddery looking rear wing, Colorado has some bitchin machined steel uprights, TU Graz has some bitchin EDM'd Ti uprights, Toledo (the glass city) has some bitchin all Lexan transparent body panels and radiator ducting. Akron U has some rediculously bitchin one piece mag wheels that they cut in house.


Design Semi's from memory (I'm forgetting several, couldn't find something to write on fast enough) were:

Cinci
VT
TU Graz
UAS Graz
U Washington
Missouri
Lawrence Tech (?)
ETS (?)
Iowa (?)
U Michigan Ann Arbor
Penn State (?)

Will have to look at the list again in the morning and get those correct, I am sure I missed a few, and may have accidentally listed a few wrongly.

Air Force and Navy both finally have cars, Kansas has a ferocious sounding twin in their extremely sexy machine, lots and lots of singles and twins this year, and to my surprise quite a number of forced induction singles (Iowa has turbo WR450 on ethanol, UW Madison has a turbo KTM on ethanol, UAS Graz running a supercharged Rotax twin).

Tomorrow will be really interesting, not sure how many cars weren't tech'd at the end of today, but there were quite a few.

Our photographer has a bunch of photos, but is having wireless connectivity problems at the motel, will link to those as quick as we can, in the mean time, exhaustion is apparent:


http://lh6.ggpht.com/_JNlhJgnxXHk/SgzedZ8I96I/AAAAAAAAA8g/WyuIK64li_o/s800/2009%20Competition%20051.jpg



Best,
Drew

[Wesley]

I'm hoping Wisconsin made semis, after they beat Missouri in finals at VIR.

Need videos and pics! First time we haven't gone to Michigan ever!

[Drew Price]

Wisconsin Madison did NOT make semis, you could hear them screaming from quite a distance.



Best,
Drew

[michaelwaltrip]

design semis were:
FEI
Purdue
Michigan
TU Graz
Rutgers
UAS Graz
Carleton
Penn State
U Wash
Kansas
ETS
Missouri S&T

[jrickert]

Is it just me or do the organizers seem really stressed/uptight/pissed off this year? Where is the relaxed FUN atmosphere that we know an love?

[Daleezer]

It's most likely left in VIR. I didn't realize how uptight MIS was until we went to VIR thisn year. Nothing against the organizers since they have 3 times as many teams to look after, but it was a huge difference and made the trip much better. I did miss not going to MIS and seeing all of the teams and the variety of cars.

[Drew Price]

Some photos here, (http://picasaweb.google.com/drewpprice/2009FSAEMichiganCompetition#) more to come later.



'Night,
Best,
Drew

[TGrau]

Originally posted by jrickert:
Is it just me or do the organizers seem really stressed/uptight/pissed off this year? Where is the relaxed FUN atmosphere that we know an love?


Fun always goes home when tech inspection starts

[Dominic Venieri]

Does anyone have results from yesterday's events online yet? Or even a picture of the scoring sheets?

Good luck to everyone out there today.

[MRacing_girl]

Originally posted by Auerbach:
Brian, I second that feeling as an alum. I already told my boss today would be less productive because I'd be on the forum looking at pics. Another ex-fsae co-worker and I spent the morning reminiscing.

My school (Texas) isn't at MIS, hopefully they'll be making it to Cali.

Good luck to all! Looks like the weather is a little damp?

Lucky me, my boss isn't even here today. Go Blue! So proud to see a great looking Maize and Blue car out there...just wish I could actually be at comp instead of tracking from my desk.

And as far as the organizers being stressed out...like was mentioned with all the sponsors not being there, they had a hard time getting volunteers / judges / etc. for all of the events this year thanks to our lovely economy. I volunteered at VIR and talked to Kaley some... it's not been easy on them and they've had to make some behind the scenes cuts in terms extras that normally happen at comp. They're trying I promise and everyone there still really wants to be there...they just don't have the support they usually do. I feel bad for not being able to help out there this week but I couldn't take off work again... VIR was a blast though and thanks to everyone who showed up for making that as fun as it was! GO BLUE!

[BrokenBack]

For those of you awaiting results; check out the TUG website!

http://racing.tugraz.at/en/med...hotos/album/results/ (http://racing.tugraz.at/en/media/photos/album/results/)

Cheers!

[DART-CG]

Go Graz!!!

[ttk3]

I have some pictures here: http://picasaweb.google.com/TK...2009?feat=directlink (http://picasaweb.google.com/TKusnierz3/RITFSAEMichigan2009?feat=directlink)

Unfortunately, I am sort of biased on the content and have not had much time to get out and see the other cars. I will get many pictures tomorrow and update the content.

[David-E]

Here are a few of my pictures from autocross day 3: http://www.flickr.com/photos/r...57618132091957/show/ (http://www.flickr.com/photos/rdsphoto/sets/72157618132091957/show/)

[RacingManiac]

http://picasaweb.google.com/ra...2009?feat=directlink (http://picasaweb.google.com/racingmaniac/FormulaSAE2009?feat=directlink)

[Ben Beacock]

For those of you curious, the lowest cost was just under $9000 and there were 91 entries. by the looks of the endurance start list though, only 75 cars are in working order. It definitely felt 'sparse' when I was down there: fewer lines, people, ect.

[J. Vinella]

Missouri S&T, Akron, Simon Bolivar, and maybe one more,

I would like to extend my deepest aplolgies for holding you up in endurance. Turns out we had a kinked fuel hose; no excuse from our part.

We'll see some of you in California.

[WALDOPIPE]

Does anyone have the results from endurace or at least wich team finished? and wich one DNF

[RacingManiac]

More pics added: http://picasaweb.google.com/ra...2009?feat=directlink (http://picasaweb.google.com/racingmaniac/FormulaSAE2009?feat=directlink)

Just U of Toronto:
http://picasaweb.google.com/ra...UofT?feat=directlink (http://picasaweb.google.com/racingmaniac/FSAE2009UofT?feat=directlink)


As per my usual practice, if you see something you'd like to use, just tell me the filename and I can send you the full size pic(now in 12 MP!)

[Jersey Tom]

Congratulations to TU Graz on their #1 finish.

Great seeing you win the competition.

Also great seeing you at Country Market!

http://i123.photobucket.com/albums/o313/NYankee1927/grazlovesbud.jpg

[J. Vinella]

I would like to thank the design judges for doing the right thing and actually awarding design to ETS and not TU Graz. Initially in the design review it went: #1 TU Graz, #2 ETS, #3 UAS Graz, #4 Penn State, but after the point reduction of the two Graz schools for not meeting the template we had our true winners. How can one win design when they are designing to different rules? Glad that was answered.

Congrats to TU Graz for the overall win. You made the right call to bring the '08 car.

[carboneater]

Graz, a small town, but two great FS teams. Congrats to TU Graz and UAS Graz to their performance!!

[Kevin Thomassen]

Nice performance from the 2 European Teams,
Looking forward to see you on the European events.

[Thomas MuWe]

Thank guys for the congrats!
It was a hard work to bring the car to the US. Our drivers were great. Racing with the wet tyres in endu on or more and more dry track. Same for counts for TU Graz & ETS I think!
@John: We were #2 tied with ETS....
Thank to all for coming to visit us in our pits. Was everytime nice talking.

Cheers

Thomas

suspension jr08evo
joanneum racing graz

[Maverik]

Can someone post the "unofficial results?" I know someone at least has to have an idea...

[flavorPacket]

1 TUG
2 RIT
3 ETS (congrats guys)
4 Purdue
5 UAS Graz
6 UMR
7 Michigan
8 ?
9 Michigan Dearborn

[Funky Luke]

Hi there,

Despite winning all the cups there was one downside to my visit at MIS:
I lost my cellphone, a rather beaten up Nokia E70.

So if anybody found it, please contact me.

Greetings from Lake Clark,
Luke

[rjwoods77]

CVT car in the top ten. Woohoo!

[Ben Coburn]

8th place is Georgia Tech.

[kira_vtec]

Originally posted by flavorPacket:
1 TUG
2 RIT
3 ETS (congrats guys)
4 Purdue
5 UAS Graz
6 UMR
7 Michigan
8 ?
9 Michigan Dearborn
10 Centro Universitario da FEI - BRASIL

[Drew Price]

Last bit of photos up, including some of the results boards and closeups of ETS and TUG from the design tent.

Photos (http://picasaweb.google.com/drewpprice/2009FSAEMichiganCompetition#)

Zhefei took video of the design reviews as well, I will post when I get them up on Youtube.

Best,
Drew

[Geoffct]

Despite the fact that it supports a Rob Woods idea, UMD is proud of our 9th place finish.

If any design judges read this we would really like to get some direct feedback about our car. With a 9th place finish, it would appear as though it works, but our design scores do not reflect that. We're right across the street from Ford headquarters so please let me know.

Also a big congrats out to the Lakehead, UIC, U Minnesota Duluth (the 2nd UMD) and many others who had great first year teams, keep up the good work. I think the slower registration this year allowed for some great additions to the field.

Geoff

[TMichaels]

Congrats to TU Graz! Finally a european team was able to win an US event after the bad luck of Delft last year.

Regards,

Tobi

[MH]

Congrats to TU Graz!! They've been very close to a win a couple of times. Glad to see that Graz is upholding the European standard and showing the other teams the way to go. And that with a (foreseen) points penalty!!
Good performances from RIT and ETS as well and I'm looking forward to seeing you in Germany in August.
Let's be honest here: that's where the real World Championships are held this year.

Cheers!

Miki Hegedus
Delft University of Technology 2001-2008

[FStotal.com]

Congrats to Technical University of Graz and all other teams attempted to competition.

Here is a 2009 FSAE Michigan playlist (http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=3211EB0BC153A67D) of youtubes.

[Navy09]

Does anyone know when the full results will be posted? I can't believe we finally finished endurance for the first time ever!

[Geoffct]

Official results should be posted sometime today. Then let the points analysis begin.

[UEGirl]

Originally posted by Navy09:
Does anyone know when the full results will be posted? I can't believe we finally finished endurance for the first time ever!

Congrats guys! Last year was the first time we were able to finish endurance and it was very exciting!

[Jason Martin]

Hey, I was wondering if the winners of the awards gets posted with the official results or if they are posted elsewhere or at all?

[VinceL]

Congratulations to the two great teams from Graz. But also, a special congratulations to my friends at ETS! You guys were great last year and you just got even better. I'm a little saddened that my former team can't claim to be best in Canada any more. However, they will be back in Germany to challenge you to that title. So watch out Jude and company.

[VinceL]

Sorry, I should have also mentioned congratulations to RIT as well. I really like your car, it's simple and effective, and very well driven.

[Mike Sadie]

Results are posted on the SAE forum.

http://forums.sae.org/access/dispatch.cgi/fsae_pf

[Yellow Ranger]

so what was the 120 point penalty for on Missouri S&T's enduro score?

[michaelwaltrip]

wow i feel terrible for rit. under last year's rules they would have won.

i think it's pretty ridiculous that a weekend autocrosser would care more about fuel economy than acceleration or steady state cornering ability.

[Landreneau]

i think you meant 120 second penalty. I was just about to ask the same thing...

[Zac]

There was some confusion during the start of endurance. PSU and Kansas dropping out moved them up them up in the run order. The S&T guys were called up in the middle of a spring change. Since they weren't together at that point, they lost their spot to another school and got hit with a 2 minute time penalty. I'm guessing that they probably got some bad information from one of the track marshals regarding how much time they had, but nothing is certain.

It looks like the new Goodyear tire code did pretty well in autocross and endurance though. RIT and S&T had about a minute on everyone else. Obviously the two Graz schools going out on and cooking their rain tires skews things a little bit, but still.

[Tech Guy]

Zac,
The "track marshals" will never give a team any start times and will tell ANY team to be ready to go at a moments notice. It only takes a couple of cars to break on track, and the next two cars need to go! Missouri S & T could see that Penn State was not on the grid, and that they were therefore 7th in line. With 6 cars on track, they were the next ones up if any of the first 6 failed. They just made a bad call.

[rjwoods77]

Geoffct,

Thank you for the backhanded compliment. I have always been a supporter of UMD and there similar yet different take on things. I am glad they did as well as they did and I am sure with further development their car will break further into the points and make more people question the supposedly overwhealming negatives of running a CVT.

Rob Woods

[Zac]

Tech Guy,
I could have sworn I heard the guys in the orange vests giving multiple teams estimates as to how much time they had before they'd be on track. But I really don't have a vested interest in this argument either way.

[terra_dactile]

Congrats to all teams who competed, a very contaversial event due to implementation of new cost rules.

I would like to mention a few words for my collegue from othe great teams.

UAS Graz:
The most inovative new engine design package at competition, the best steering interface which is a nice balance between our over simplictic dash and the formula 1 quality steering interface of TU Graz. Very well designed car from a mechanical stand point and in all my favourite competitor team and car. I reall hope that you guys will get a chance to be second behind us in germany LOL.

TU Graz 1st because i belive they get hit hardest by negative comments, they won design and deserved too do so in the design debriefing, we won by default. Thier car has the best use of simulation and tire data to start the initial design choice neccesary in this field, the have the ebst undersanding of vehicle dynamics and most impressing cotrols for driver interface. They deserved every bit if the comments they recieved during the debreiffing. I sat in their car and understood why the judges appreciate this car more then ours for 2 year running in design event. The steering wheel interface is so usefull and impressive that even though mechanically I have one of the best understanding of brake and the steering system, I never even had the time to turn their steering our feel the brakes properly. They have a great car, that lest we forget won all dynamic events except for endurance proving their excellenece in design choices.

RIT
You guys have an amazing package that has the ebst compromize between eefective design, performance and minimal cost expenditures. I am so happy you guys did so well, it took lots of guts to chose to run slick at the time we started endurance, I guess it was your only choice thought to try and catch TU Graz. Great endurance performace, we look forward to beating you guy with liots of love in Geramny.

Missourri S&T
Great vehichle, very impressive design based on performance criteria. I saw your design boards and was quite honestly intimidated in design semis by all the development your team has accomplshed with aerodymic and with resepct to vehicle dynamics/ simulation and track tuning from these engineering actions. Dissapointed with the 120 minute penalty, but that is racing and your team should not dwell to long on something that is clearly specified in the rules. Im sure that the organizors had lots of difficluty giving out this penalty but have no choice but to follow the rules.

In all an amazing event, it was my last in detroit and I am so proud to have been part of the development of a team that went from 67th overall in 2004 to 3rd overall in 2009.

I will have one more chance at the 1st place world championship trophy in FSG this summer but for the rest of the teams that wont compete in this event I would like to just recommend that you look at ways to be self critical and improve instead of dwelling on reason why things were not fair for your team as this is the secret to having succes in the future.

Jude Berthault
ETS FSAE 2003-2009
Technical director

[Mikey Antonakakis]

I would like to just recommend that you look at ways to be self critical and improve instead of dwelling on reason why things were not fair for your team as this is the secret to having succes in the future.

Jude Berthault
ETS FSAE 2003-2009
Technical director

I am starting to agree more and more with this comment as time goes on, especially with respect to budgets/manpower.

[exFSAE]

Originally posted by michaelwaltrip:
wow i feel terrible for rit. under last year's rules they would have won.

i think it's pretty ridiculous that a weekend autocrosser would care more about fuel economy than acceleration or steady state cornering ability.

Yea they mention that "weekend autocrosser" thing what, one time in the rules? But in reality we all know the competition went beyond that sometime in the last 10 years. I don't know of many casual weekend autocrossers featuring carbon tubs, carbon wheels, self-made ECU's with traction and launch control, computer-controlled brake bias, live telemetry, optical slip angle sensors, etc.

Fuel economy IS a big deal in professional racing, and it is a good engineering challenge. Getting enough enrichment on-throttle for acceleration, neutral or leaned out when it's not needed, while still maintaining smooth transitions and drivability.

That said, is 100 points a bit of a stretch relative to accel and skidpad? I'd lean toward yes.

[Zac]

Originally posted by michaelwaltrip:
wow i feel terrible for rit. under last year's rules they would have won.

i think it's pretty ridiculous that a weekend autocrosser would care more about fuel economy than acceleration or steady state cornering ability.

although it's interesting to speculate, I wouldn't get too worked up over the "what if" scenarios. If this comp used last years rule book, TUG would have still won because they wouldn't have been hit with a 35 point template penalty.

at it's core, this is an engineering competition and not a race. while I agree that fuel economy might be weighted a little too heavily, the rules are also the same for everyone. it's your job as an engineer to optimize your design to meet the objective.

I think RIT and TUG both did a fantastic job though.

[Wesley]

We design our cars for the weekend autocrosser not simply because of the rules, but because we drive them regularly at weekend autocross events. Building a car that can't perform in these events is worthless to us, and as such, that is our focus.

With that said, I agree, this IS an engineering competition - hence the fuel economy rules. It adds another element to the understanding a student must have - the scoring change will be a valid consideration when they go to work in the real world, where car manufacturers ARE trying to squeeze power and economy out.

If the rule can inspire student engineers to perform a more in depth analysis of their design from an economy standpoint, the intent of the rule and of the competition is achieved.

I also applaud the efforts to adjust the relevance and importance of the cost event - a team like UMD performing as well as they did speaks so much more highly to me than a school that has consistently been well funded and done pretty well in the past. It's just my opinion coming from a "lower-middle class" team, but in terms of resources we just can't compete with the Austrian teams, so to see people do so well with a much cheaper car makes me think of them as better engineers. However, I love the Graz cars. They are amazing machines.

[JamesWolak]

Originally posted by rjwoods77:
CVT car in the top ten. Woohoo!

*Two* CVT cars

Dearborn Michigan runs a CVT.

[jsmooz]

Wesley - Thanks for the complement. We felt the same way during the awards banquet when counted the number of people on stage for the top 3 teams. One must realize Michigan - Dearborn is a ~10 man team. We continually don't do great in statics because we rather spend time getting the car to function great instead of presenting it great. We take a practical approach to car design, just like the real world. It must be cost effective, simple to build, and perform well. But like you, I really like drooling over the 'fancy' cars.

Good luck at West.

[John L.]

On behalf of the Detroit SCCA and all of the on-track volunteers, CONGRATULATIONS to all of this year's teams! We enjoyed watching you perform.

Our photographer is in the process of posting photos here > http://bucchi.smugmug.com/2009%20FSAE%20AT%20MIS < can you find your team?

- John L.

[rjwoods77]

James,

Who is the other CVT car at comp? I thought UMD was the only one there.

[rjwoods77]

I didn't realize that Dearborn wasn't UMD. Apply this to what I mentioned in previous posts. And Bradley's and St. Cloud's CVT makes correction number two.

[JamesWolak]

Originally posted by rjwoods77:
I didn't realize that Dearborn wasn't UMD. Apply this to what I mentioned in previous posts. And Bradley's and St. Cloud's CVT makes correction number two.

Damnit you're right i am dumb. UMD=Dearborn

[rjwoods77]

UMD=Univ of Minnesota-Duluth

[FStotal.com]

Could you all please help us for some more statistics:

- weight results (kg)
- DNF reasons Endurance
- award winners

[jm1495]

Congrats to my fellow Boilermakers on their 4th place finish! Best ever finish in school history! This has been a long time coming and a well deserved finish!

[Romano]

Originally posted by exFSAE:
Fuel economy IS a big deal in professional racing, and it is a good engineering challenge. Getting enough enrichment on-throttle for acceleration, neutral or leaned out when it's not needed, while still maintaining smooth transitions and drivability.

That said, is 100 points a bit of a stretch relative to accel and skidpad? I'd lean toward yes.

Maybe I'm saying this because of McGill's completely surprising first place in Fuel Economy, but you could argue that this is an autocross race, so straight line acceleration and steady state cornering have less to do with the platonic ideal autocross race than fuel economy, as poor fuel economy could really come and bite you during an extended endurance race, probably more so than being able to shave off a few 10ths per lap because you can come out of a straight that much quicker.

Nevertheless, I think the moral is that the competition has rules, and if you want to do very well, you have to excel within those rules. TU Graz saw that the advantages to not obeying the section rule outweighed the penalties, and they were thus rewarded with extremely good performance in all dynamic events.

Maxime Romano
McGill FSAE Captain, 07-09

[Dennis Seichter]

Well, actually the reason the TU Graz car did not meet the template rules is just that it was designed for FSG 2008. How could they possibly modify their monocoque in order to comply the 09 rules?

Their new car will meet the new rules just as every other European 2009 car that I have seen so far.

Come on guys, let's face it: that tankia just an awesome machine, they deserve the overall win. Congrats to Graz!


Originally posted by Romano:
Nevertheless, I think the moral is that the competition has rules, and if you want to do very well, you have to excel within those rules. TU Graz saw that the advantages to not obeying the section rule outweighed the penalties, and they were thus rewarded with extremely good performance in all dynamic events.

Maxime Romano
McGill FSAE Captain, 07-09

[Zac]

Originally posted by Romano:

Maybe I'm saying this because of McGill's completely surprising first place in Fuel Economy, but you could argue that this is an autocross race, so straight line acceleration and steady state cornering have less to do with the platonic ideal autocross race than fuel economy, as poor fuel economy could really come and bite you during an extended endurance race, probably more so than being able to shave off a few 10ths per lap because you can come out of a straight that much quicker.


You guys did a great job managing how much fuel you used.

I agree, if this was a true endurance race, there's a distinct advantage in having lower fuel consumption than your competitors. But at the same time, that advantage disappears if one of those competitors is able to put enough distance on the rest of the field(or at least the portion of the field getting better mileage) that they can stop to top off their fuel and sill maintain their position. RIT came pretty close to lapping everyone.

but then again, this is a design competition and not a race.

[Mikey Antonakakis]

Originally posted by FStotal:
Could you all please help us for some more statistics:

- weight results (kg)
- DNF reasons Endurance
- award winners
For Columbia, we weighed in at 235kg. We DNF'ed in endurance because of vapor lock of the fuel pump. Our exhaust was close to the fuel tank, and with the body work on, there was no air flow in the area. But as long as I kept moving (I was driving), I was fine. Unfortunately, my team decided to flag me down as I drove by. The officials didn't throw any flags, but I couldn't ignore my team mates. I thought maybe something was seriously wrong with the car. It turns out they were just wondering if I wanted rain tires or not. I came to a stop, the car stalled, and I couldn't get it started again because of the vapor lock. We were 17 laps into the race. Oh well, we will certainly be investing in a radio system for next year, and focusing more on heat shielding and air flow between the gas tank and engine.

[michaelwaltrip]

Originally posted by Zac:

but then again, this is a design competition and not a race.

you are still supposed to design a race car though. RIT put almost 70 seconds on ETS, 3.5 seconds per lap faster and used only .4 gallons more fuel. on a longer course this advantage surely would have gone up.

if this were a 'real' race series, involving refueling during the race, much more emphasis would be put on quickly refueling, i.e. quick release fuel hoses, etc.

even if you have to refuel twice as much after 20 laps, it's not going to take even 35 seconds to put in 1.1 gallons of fuel. even nascar can fill a (much larger) fuel cell in <15 seconds.

i understand the reasons to have a fuel-efficient vehicle, but in racing, i still think 22 km per 1 gallon is pretty good, and would take a car that is 70 seconds faster over that 22 km than one that used .4 gallons of fuel less. under last year's fuel economy rules, using over 1.5 gallons pretty much disqualified you. i think this is a better solution than taking 80 points away from the fastest competitor who still only used a reasonable amount of fuel.

i'm not trying to take anything away from TUG or ETS, they are both engineering marvels that i would have been proud to present at the competition, but i believe at the very least, RIT should have been given the endurance award.

[t21jj]

We had a good time despite not competing in endurance. We suffered a starter one way clutch failure, a lack of spare parts and the amount of time it takes to get our engine out of the car doomed us. Although we worked right up until the 3:30 deadline.

Over all we did well in the static events and the car showed potential in the dynamic events. We had just about no testing time and all but two of our drivers had never driven the car. We had our best finish in design ever (tie for 12th with 100pts) and 12th in cost ($9,669).

Our car came right in at 390lbs and we know that we can shed a lot off of that for next year.

Congrats to TU Graz in the overall win and RIT and ETS. Also thanks to UAS Graz for taking the time to talk to us during and after the final design review about your car, I know we asked a lot of questions.

Iowa State University
http://img513.imageshack.us/img513/9524/img1887g.jpg

[pltisser]

Originally posted by michaelwaltrip:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Zac:
you are still supposed to design a race car though. RIT put almost 70 seconds on ETS, 3.5 seconds per lap faster and used only .4 gallons more fuel. on a longer course this advantage surely would have gone up. .

When we first saw the rule modification on fuel economy point we knew that it was the key for gaining point over our competitor. In the endurance race we were running on rain tire and RIT was on dry explaining the large 70 seconds difference between us. Maybe they would still be able to be faster then us we will never know. But on thing is certain, Tug was first in all other dynamic event and were running on rain tire to and we finish ahead of them in the endurance race. I think the key in this competition is to adapt quickly to rule changes.

[Thomas MuWe]

@michael:
You really take NASCAR as a "real" racing series? It is not cheap to race in NASCAR and the design (carburettor) is from yesterday!!!

I think it would have been better to wait 20 minutes before the endurance start to have a fair race.

@jude:
Thank you very much for everything you did for us at MIS. I think the team from jr09 would love to finish second in Germany behind you guys!!! :-) Where can they subscribe the contract?!
You deserved to finish in the top places. I am looking forward to see you in Germany. And thank you for the compliments.
I loved to sit in your car after design finals. Really impressive. You have one of the most desirable engineering product - but no supercharger! :-)

I would also like to thank the guys from the Oakland University for being our host before comp @MIS. Good luck for your next car!

Again congrats to RIT, TUG and ETS.

Best regards from Toronto

Thomas

suspension jr08evo
joanneum racing graz

[D Collins Jr]

If FSAE was a "real" racing series...we'd all be paying professional drivers...

[FeX32]

Anyone know if the award winners will be posted anywhere?

[FeX32]

NM just found it. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

[Drew Price]

If FSAE was a "real" racing series ..... we would all feel like Matt Brown, in his 'Getting the Balance Right' (http://www.superfastmatt.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=7&Itemid=23) column from a few months back. (Wise beyond his years for sure.)

Suffice to say, none of us would be perusing this forum multiple times per day to see what everyone else is up to!


Best,
Drew

[MalcolmG]

Originally posted by michaelwaltrip:

you are still supposed to design a race car though. RIT put almost 70 seconds on ETS, 3.5 seconds per lap faster and used only .4 gallons more fuel. on a longer course this advantage surely would have gone up.

if this were a 'real' race series, involving refueling during the race, much more emphasis would be put on quickly refueling, i.e. quick release fuel hoses, etc.


even if you have to refuel twice as much after 20 laps, it's not going to take even 35 seconds to put in 1.1 gallons of fuel. even nascar can fill a (much larger) fuel cell in <15 seconds.

i understand the reasons to have a fuel-efficient vehicle, but in racing, i still think 22 km per 1 gallon is pretty good, and would take a car that is 70 seconds faster over that 22 km than one that used .4 gallons of fuel less.

Look at it in terms of percentages though, if one car uses more than 50% more fuel than a competitor, and fuel tank size is limited by either rules or packaging, that's very likely to mean more pit stops for the less efficient car - which equates to a lot more lost time than the time required to pump the extra fuel in. Do you think in F1 a team would be happy to carry 50% more fuel than everyone else, or pit 3 times rather than twice for a slight performance gain?

Fuel efficiency is important in motorsport as well as road cars, and energy efficiency generally is an important consideration practically everywhere. Sure, the fuel economy rules be an annoying extra consideration that you don't want to deal with, but that's life.

(edit - the following doesn't necessarily apply the above post, just a general statement)
I really wish people would stop trying to compare FSAE to "real" racing though, because you're kidding yourself if you think this competition should mirror what occurs in professional motorsport - it's a fun, enlightening, and immensely awesome engineering design competition, if you choose to ignore certain parts of the criteria for the design competition then you do so at your own peril and don't deserve to right to moan about it if it effects your scores.

[VFR750R]

I agree with Malcolm.
Fuel economy IS a real racing parameter.
Ask Ben Spies 2 weeks ago if he wished his WSB R1 got better fuel economy.
I'm just glad FSAE has significant fuel tank allowances so that you don't risk falling out of endurance for running out of fuel. At least it's up to the team to decide how much fuel to carry and how much they use. You can argue all day about what the point weighting should be, but everyone knew ahead of time, at the same time, what the rules for fuel consumption were. I'm sure some teams will re-evaluate the decisions they made regarding fuel consumption. Some will ignore the event all together and just hope for the best; which I feel has been the design choice for most teams when it was only worth 50 points. It doesn't take a stretch of the imagination to think the lack of consideration of the teams on the fuel event influenced the rules committee to make the event worth more points.

And as far as FSAE as a racing series, it's as real as it gets. I can't think of an aspect of FSAE that doesn't have a direct parallelism to the real thing. The only thing more real would be racing more events, and like someone else said, hiring a wheel man. ...now if we could just add an oval event! I'd also like to make it so aero IS significant, because in the real world, if it has 4 wheels, aero IS significant.

As far as templates go, at least this year will be the only time the old and new cars compete head to head. Cars not meeting templates next year won't be allowed on track.

[Kyle Walther]

I am really surprised by the lack of uproar over TUG winning with an illegal car.



Nothing against TUG i am a big fan of the ultra expensive engineering marvels they put together. I am glad that teams can compete against budgets and resources as expansive as TUG. I would hate for this series to become a spending/resource war.

[MalcolmG]

get over it. It wasn't an illegal car, it was a car that first competed less than a year ago and was therefore clearly allowed to not meet the template rule, and suffered a penalty because of it. They didn't design the car with the intention of circumventing a rule, the rule didn't exist before their car was built and that's why there was an allowance for those cars in the rules. It's not like they were running with a 1000cc engine or anything that would significantly effect the performance. The templates cause slight kinematics and packaging compromises, and make the cars a bit fatter, but nothing that's going to alter results. They also didn't build the car with the 100pt fuel economy rule in mind, but I don't see you complaining about how they were disadvantaged because of that?

[Mike Macie]

I'm sure they could have brought their new template car and had the same result. Organizers had to of known it would be possible to still win with the current template penalty. Since this is the first year, I think it's to be fair to the teams that tried to design the car to fit the template but still failed. Not even sure the templates were well defined a couple years ago when the car was designed. Pretty crazy knowing that the car graz will bring next year is already done and will have over a year of testing and tuning. Who knows if it will meet the new rules though.

Did Royce go over any new rule changes for next year at comp? Is the seat back angle in affect?

Huge props to RIT

[Adambomb]

I agree. If I remember right they did have their '09 car complete, but if I had the choice to take a car that we've been driving around for a year with an automatic 35 point penalty, or a fresh car, I think I would have done the same thing. The rules were laid out beforehand, and as far as I'm concerned it's just another bit of strategy. Looking at how well sorted out their car was, and how many gremlins we still haven't killed off yet, I'm sort of getting into the idea of debuting the car in Germany and then taking it back to MIS after we've lived with it for a year...

[MalcolmG]

I read somebody, I think it was Pat Clarke, mention that the reason for the design penalty clause for non-compliance with the template rules was that so teams who built cars for 2008 events (and therefore, rules) could still compete within in 2009 events that were within the 1 year cycle allowed. The statement also mentioned that it didn't apply to 2009 year cars, and that they would all be expected to meet the templates before they could compete.

[Garlic]

Originally posted by Kyle Walther:
I am really surprised by the lack of uproar over TUG winning with an illegal car.

Give me a break. They overcame the penalty to win.

The rule change isn't a specific performance enhancer, the difference is difficult to measure but it's not anything close to a seperate class of car.

Your comment about them being fast due to spending is equally wrong while at the same time being completely seperate topic. Money had nothing to do with them not meeting the rules. And FSAE will never be about how much money you have. Every year there are big budget teams that suck and skin-of-your teeth teams that do well. Look at all the teams with the cash to buy an Aprilia, where are they? Not dominating as the specs might lead one to beleive. Where are the active suspensions and the like dominating the charts? FSAE will always be about thoughtful practical design and team management. Not money.

It's downright shameful to compare a well deserving team to bank robbers. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_mad.gif

[Adambomb]

Did Royce go over any new rule changes for next year at comp? Is the seat back angle in affect?

As far as I recall from one of the leader meetings, they've found a way to null the concerns with seat back angle. Shouldn't be any significant changes to the rules, mostly just a bit of cleaning up so they're a little more clear.

[VFR750R]

I disagree with the idea of running cars with different rules even with a points penalty, but hindsight is 20/20. With as widespread as these competitions have gotten with no distinct 'season', the rules committee should seriously consider releasing rules 2 years in advance on non safety related changes. I don't consider the templates to be a safety change by the way. It's a positive change for the cars, but I've seen one of these cars stop from ~35mph to 0 in about 2 inches and the driver was nothing more then sore.

833.5 points (868.5 without deductions) isn't a dominating performance. If you add up the points they made over the next highest finisher with 'legal' tub in skidpad, autocross and endurance, it is less the 35 points. In fact, they were beat by 3 cars (including Missouri S&T minus their late start penalty) in endurance meeting the templates.

I don't think anyone would be on solid ground saying it made the difference at this competition.

[Kyle Walther]

I agree that the bank robber thing was harsh. I apologize. It just seems very unfair to the teams that were forced to bring template legal cars to competition.

With the competition being so close how can you say that any difference in rules could not be an advantage. you can only speculate and so can i, and that's where we will differ.

[Wesley]

Yeah, us "rich" teams that can "afford" an aprilia. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif

Guess the 2nd place win at VIR will be written off since "there's no such thing as competition" at VIR...

There's really no sense arguing when people have made up their minds. I would like to see how many people that have said "give me a break" came from historically low budget teams though.

[MalcolmG]

what do you consider low budget? How much does it cost your team to attend your nearest event? How big is your local automotive industry? What about other engineering industries that are likely to want to sponsor an FSAE team? And how hard do you try to attract new sponsors? What fund-raising schemes do you run each year? How often do you attend expos, shows etc to display your car, your team, and try to attract more sponsors?

I have to say, I don't think I've heard any team complain more on these forums about lack of funding than Oklahoma. I've never met you, I'm sure you're a great bunch of guys, but I think you should stop playing the "budget" card and if you feel it's such a massive hinderance then you should put more effort into trying to raise cash and attract sponsors.

[Pennyman]

In my opinion if you've got 1/10 the budget but get more than 10% the points of the big dogs, you've won.

[jpusb]

Did anyone check out (or even better, have photos) of the 5 lap (or so) duel between VT Motorsports and us (F-SAE USB, Universidad Simon Bolivar, Venezuela) during both first drivers on the endurance?
I know I was racing Misouri S&T, Washington (which had a problem as they stated before) and I don't know who else, I got to pass 2 cars I did not know who they were.
Pictures of the duel would be great. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

[Luniz]

@Kyle: Come on, get over it. TUG's Car was by far the most advanced in terms of engineering expertise. Stop being a douchebag and complaining about your oh so low budget, stop just buying the most expensive parts and bolting them together and start being an engineer! Look at the 2008 Stuttgart car for example: Nothing too fancy there, steel spaceframe, naturally aspirated 4cyl Honda (I think), regular shocks and ARB, regular tyres... No fancy crap, no rocket science and no ion-implated unobtainium anywhere to be found. And still this little white car managed to slay everyone else around. Sure, Stuttgarts budget is also in the upper third of all competitors, but they used it wisely on research rather than a fancy italian engine.

Just my two cents...

[Bemo]

Thanks for the compliment Luniz.

I just want to add one thing to this discussion. Someone had the opinion that TUG could have brought their new car as it is already built.
In my opinion a car isn't done when it is running. Having a car which is ready for a competition requires an adequate testing period.
Like most European teams TUG plans the development of their car to be competitive at the UK competition for the first time. And just because a car is running, doesn't mean the job is done.
We also have our 09 car already running, whith which we might attend at MIS next year. But we still need time to get it into competition condition. That testing time is part of our schedule for the season and in our opinion absolutely necessary to be able to achieve good results.

Calling the TUG car illegal is just unfair, as they just used a possibility the rules clearly gave them. Without that -35points rule there would have been no European teams at all at MIS this year.
Would you call it fair, if they wouldn't have had a chance to compete at all?

My advice is, concentrate on yourself, try to get the hell out of your own car and stop complainig that someone had an advantage because of whatever.

TUG built an amazing car and they one a competition with it. If you can't accept that, you've got a problem.

[Wesley]

And I suppose that's the difference between people who think about issues and people who don't.

I've been pretty careful to do none of the "complaining" that you guys seem to mention. But I have raised the issue often, for the sake of discussion. And when you can't or don't want to answer the question, you give me a "quit bitching" answer. So whenever you care to actually give a competent answer, I'm waiting.

Either way, it doesn't matter how I feel, when you get into industry you'll learn it the hard way.

[Kyle Walther]

What are you talking about? when have i ever said that the team i was formerly on many years ago was underfunded? read the sig. it says alum.

And i love the stuttgart car. it's my personal favorite. geez get your facts straight before you start bashing people.

I already apologized for my previous statement about TUG. I realized that i should have directed it at the officials for allowing two rule sets instead of giving all teams the option to take a penalty.

The car was illegal. calling it so is fair. It wouldn't have been given a penalty if the organizers believed that the new rule changes didn't affect performance. it seems such a change from the previous year when teams were tossed out for minor rule infractions.

You say that they did it to bring the European teams. do they get the rule book two months later?? could they not shift their manf. schedules up to debut their 09 cars at detroit?? you pretend like that is impossible when all the teams in the US have 09 cars at east and some even competed at VIR. i believe the rules came out at the same time for everyone.

[Wesley]

I'm pretty sure I'm the only one who mentions budget, not my team. So if you have a problem with it, direct it at me, not Oklahoma. I just have yet to see a European team acknowledge that someone who can do well for cheaper is superior.

In all honesty, relax people. I don't care if I'm right, I just want discussion. It's clear to me now that people who have money think "shove it" and people who don't tend to agree with me.

All in all, the responses are interesting and serve as a good indicator of team attitude in general.

[Luniz]

@Wesley: You are absolutely right, if you do well for cheaper, you are superior. But as this is one of the aims of the competition, to make the best out of the ressources available, one can not argue that someone else just did better because of their budget. Or more drastically expressed: If you perform badly, you can't argue that someone else only did better because of having a bigger wallet. That would just be too easy. Money makes life a lot easier for sure, but you still need to think about a thing ot two to get a properly running car.

[Bemo]

You opened a discussion, I stated my opinion, what's the big deal?

What disturbs me here is that no one is able to just congratulate the Graz team for a great job.

Budget issues I didn't even mention. I didn't want to attack anybody. Perhabs some things weren't said in a perfect way and didn't sound like I intended. If so I apologize, I'm not a native English speaker so things like that can occure.

I also have to say, that I haven't been talking about a particular team. It was ment as a general statement. Very often I also have to tell people from my own team who start to make speculations about the budget of other teams, that we can't know how much other teams really have and that it doesn't count anyway.

I think that our team always respects the efforts of all other teams and no one here doubts that we have much better working conditions than a lot of others.

The attidute in our team is that we accept the winner of the competition.
Last year at FSG our chain brike in the last lap of Enduro and stopped us from winning and nobody ever doubted in our team that Delft was the true winner.

The guys from both Graz teams are really great and they do great jobs, so in my opinion it is not fair to reduce their success to the fact that they didn't meet the template rule. They had to get over a 35 points penalty. That's quite a lot. They lost lots of points in cost because of their fancy car. So everybody should accept that they did a great job.

[MalcolmG]

You say that they did it to bring the European teams. do they get the rule book two months later?? could they not shift their manf. schedules up to debut their 09 cars at detroit?? you pretend like that is impossible when all the teams in the US have 09 cars at east and some even competed at VIR. i believe the rules came out at the same time for everyone.

Yes but everyone's schedule is organised around the first competition they design for. We start our design in January, build begins around April-May, car runs in September, competition is in November/December. We organise everything around this - changes of management, recruitment of new members, sponsorship arrangements, etc etc. It also happens that our academic year is on a similar cycle. It would be a massive step for us to rearrange everything around having it ready for a different competition.

I imagine what most teams that travel for multiple competitions do is organise themselves around a local competition, and then if the car is competitive and if finances and the alignment of the planets allow it, then they take it to other competitions. Typically travelling further abroad significantly increases the costs involved, so it would be silly to build for a competition you may not even be able to afford to attend. For what it's worth we've attended Germany once, and it cost us about 8 times more than it costs to go to Australia (and it really blew the budget), and it takes so much more effort for the logistics of getting the car and people to and from the other side of the world. Also, unless you're air-freighting (at a considerable cost), the transit times can quickly escalate if it's held up in customs and stuff, and with not a lot of time separating the US comps and Formula Student, you'd run the risk of not getting the car back in time for adequate preparation before the event.

It would be silly to plan your year around a far abroad competition that you didn't know whether you could attend.

With our design starting in January, we usually have only "possible" rule changes to go off if we want to design a car that will be able to compete in events the following year, I don't think it would be very fair to teams building around the Aus comp if they didn't create concessions for teams building to the previous year's rules, as we'd only be eligible for one competition before new rules came in to effect and made the cars obsolete.

I think you need to remember that this competition is all about learning, and letting teams attend multiple competitions affords them more opportunities to learn. I'd hate to see things get so competitive that it started to hinder the ability of teams to attend events.

[Kyle Walther]

Its funny how people like to think that these template rules where just made up and submitted at the last second this year. They were testing them back in 07, and made drawings available before the rules came out if i am not mistaken.

Did the Australian teams have the opportunity to conform to the rules that would be in place if they so chose to attend the 09 Detroit competition?

And the European teams had the opportunity to accelerate their manf. schedules if they wanted.

The rules committee did not need to put the grandfather clause in the rules. That is my point.

So what if it messes up your schedule, that's no reason to have two sets of rules and potentially give one or the other side any possible advantage. I think you would learn more about planning and forethought if they had made the rules more strict forcing you to plan even further ahead.

[MalcolmG]

We did, we built our car to meet the 2009 templates, despite the fact they were only proposed rule changes when we started design. We even built to meet the "bring your knees up past the steering wheel while belted in" rule that they scrapped. Remember that teams building their 2008 cars for FS UK would have been designing them almost 2 years ago. How much advantage do you feel not meeting templates has given these teams? In autocross in Aus, in a templates-compliant car with less than a week of testing, UWA were as fast as Stuttgart who were in a non template car that had been through (and won) several competitions and had undergone a lot of testing.

[Mike Cook]

Hold on a second here....

Is someone actually suggesting that money doesn't influence the results? Are you on crack? With maybe a few exceptions, teams need at least 30-40k to make a competitive push to win formula. More money=quicker build = more test time.

Second, TUG is illegal. Just because it was still allowed to run doesn't change that fact. They made the right choice, and they definitely brought a great car (from what I have seen online).

Those Midwest guys have been out there dominating for a long time, so i'd take a second before criticizing any of them.

Lets face it guys, the big 3 are in the shitter and European manufactures aren't doing so bad, we had our heyday now they get theirs.

[MalcolmG]

I'm not criticising anyone's cars or engineering skills, but questioning their attitudes toward other teams. I'm not sure this discussion is going anywhere though, and unfortunately I have a car to build (which may or may not be 2010 rules compliant - lets hope they don't make any big changes)

[Bemo]

I also didn't want to critisize someone cars. My point is, that all teams should be able to accept a winner. And a car which is allowed to attend is per definition not illegal in my opinion.
We already had the budget discussion in another thread and I think everything about that topic is said.

@ Kyle: You tell me it wouldn't be a problem to get our car done two months earlier if we just wanted?
When a European team is founded it is focused on the local competitions of course because it won't be able to go overseas anyway.
Once you have your rythm it is quite difficult to change it because that would mean that you would have much less time for the first car after the change (and at least time is something no one of us has enough).

I totally agree with Malcolm. When we start designing our car, we don't know if we will have the money to go to an overseas competition. So making our schedule around MIS would mean to make it around a competition which we don't know if can attend at all.

What you're saying sounds to me like "I don't care, it's the problem of the European teams how they manage to come with cars according to new rules".
That's like we would suggest to let the new rules come in charge at the UK competition so it's the problem of American teams who come to us.

We are always really happy when teams come from overseas to the European competitions, try to help them and have a great time together.

We always think competitions should be as international as possible. It would be a shame if a team couldn't attend a competition because of rule changes there has to be a solution for that.

By the way, one reasen for going to Australia instead of MIS for us, was that we saw this discussion coming and looked for an event in 08.

[TMichaels]

What you're saying sounds to me like "I don't care, it's the problem of the European teams how they manage to come with cars according to new rules".
That's like we would suggest to let the new rules come in charge at the UK competition so it's the problem of American teams who come to us.

We are always really happy when teams come from overseas to the European competitions, try to help them and have a great time together.

We always think competitions should be as international as possible. It would be a shame if a team couldn't attend a competition because of rule changes there has to be a solution for that.
Amen

[Mikey Antonakakis]

Having a bigger budget definitely makes things easier. There is more money available to promote interest, for one thing. That interest brings members to the team. I think manpower and good management are the two essentials to having a successful team. Having money helps bring in members, and more members can bring in more money. That said, there is no reason why a team with a small budget (like us, around $20-25k) can't do well. If we would have finished endurance, we would have been in the top 30, maybe top 25. If we would have validated our designs, I'm sure we would have at least moved up to the 80 pt design bracket (we scored 60 with little to no validation or testing). If we would have been prepared for presentation event, we could have scored pretty well I feel, somewhere around 50 pts instead of 28. If our muffler wouldn't have been stopped up with screen mesh to meet noise, we would have been in the mid 4-seconds for accel, I'm sure. If a c-clip didn't fall off of one of our halfshafts, we would have had a very competitive autox time (54.9 with intermittent power to only one wheel, thankfully we ran an LSD so as long as I didn't give too much throttle I was able to accelerate a little bit). Based on the times we were running for endurance, we were looking at scoring at least 150 pts there, and if I would have had more time to tune the engine, we would have probably gotten 40-50 pts for fuel economy. This totals to a potential 550 points if things had just gone our way. That would put us somewhere in the top 20, with no testing time. Obviously, luck will tend to be more in your favor if you actually have the car done in time to do testing. I guess my point is, manpower is much more important than money in this competition. I have no doubt we could be a top-ten team just by having more committed members that ensure the car has months to test.

[Wesley]

Originally posted by Luniz:
If you perform badly, you can't argue that someone else only did better because of having a bigger wallet.

I agree. And that's obviously not where my discussion stems from, because we do fairly well and we're not drastically underfunded. Our testing budget is really the only thing that suffers, to be honest. But those 10,000 dollars worth of strain gauges and optical slip angle sensors and combustion pressure sensors sure would be nice. Or really even a working engine dyno. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif

Also, if I haven't said it, congratulations to TUG, I've always loved the cars.

[MH]

Just to add my 2 cents.
First of all, if you interpret the rules, which are THE SAME for everybody and take advantage of it, then in my opinion you're smarter than the rest.

Second of all, as Stuttgart showed already in many competitions, it really doesn't take that much money to build a good and simple car, with which you can dominate everybody. Besides, as we all well-educated people know, the last 10% of high-tech, fancy gimmicks cost about 90% of the total funds, or 20-80, well you get the picture.

Third of all, if you don't have enough money, PUT MORE EFFORT in finding extra funds!! I'm not just talking about cash. Get machine time that is not being used, get materials that are not being sold, ask advice from people who are not extremenly busy at the moment, get that extra testing space that is not being used... Be creative!!

Why Graz has so "much money"? Because they put effort into raising it!

Also want to add that last year in Michigan the foreign teams absolutely dominated the comp, for the exception of Wisconsin Madison.

All that said, I would like to remind everybody that you should always set your own targets. If you, for some reason, don't have the funds or the people, set your targets accordingly. I've seen teams being insanely happy just being able to compete. I know my team (Delft) always supported other teams at the comps in achieving their goals, whether those are competitors for the win, or just trying to compete at all.

I'm sorry to say this, but I read a lot reactions from sore losers. Let's face it, the competition is evolving world wide, if you don't evolve with it, you're going to be extinct.

Cheers!
Miki Hegedus
Delft University of Technology
2001-2008

[Wesley]

Third of all, if you don't have enough money, PUT MORE EFFORT in finding extra funds!!

You're making a major incorrect assumption, and that's that working harder will net you more money. You're also assuming to know how much effort we put into getting money.

Some of the hardest workers in America make the least money.

We also didn't compete against TUG this year, which means we can't have lost to them.

[MH]

Thanks Wesley, you just proved my point.

Best wishes,

Miki Hegedus
Delft University of Technology
2001-2008

[terra_dactile]

To whom this may concern,

1st Insight: TUG does not necessarly have a bigger budget then any other middle team from the USA, they live in a pool of great companies, Ackropvic,Rotax,Redbull,AVL etc...

2nd: A professional car does not necessarly mean a huge budget: Look at our 2004 car, im sure you would be suprised to know that if it wasnt for the donation aof a team memeber we did not have enough money to go 12 hrs trip to detroit in 2004!

3rd: Wisconsin Madison, they we able to beat the best teams in the world in 2007, maybe some would be suprised but even after this performance the team payed from their pocket to travel to FSG 2007!

4th: UAS GRAZ, Just as professional car as TUG in every section of vehicle. The team payed from tehir pocket for entire trip to USA 2009 and is the biggest sponsor on their car as they have payed from personal earnings for a big % of vehcile cost!

5th:When people start arguing the outcome if the rules were from last year, they lose the right to argue if one team is illigal as they dont even respect the rule themselves with their intial comments.

6th: This excuse about budget will never go away, in 2004 Cornell, 2005 Western Austrailia, 2006 TUG & RMIT, 2007 Wisconsin Madison / RMIT, 2008 Stuttgart / Western Austrailia.

Instead of just assuming (A practise which can be very dangerous in engineering) why not go talk with these teams and find out that they suffer just as much as anybody to fight for the win, its just some team use their ressources differntly and prioitize more marketing and engineering instead of just concentrating on the fun stuff we all love.

In 2009 under the financial crisis managed to get 25 K $ worth of equipment from a big US company that is more then 2000 KM away from us, this was very hard for us and intialy impossible!

If anyone would like some help with techniques I have learnt to be able to compete with these supossed F1 budget teams then you can send me question at jude.berthault.1@ens.etsmtl.ca I will do my best to respond quickly as we prepare to compete in FSG 2009.

Good luck to all

Next year you might have to face me in design, the only differnece will be that I will most likely be a judge so you better get your arguments sorted!

Jude Berthault
ETS FSAE 2003-2009
Technical Director

[Zac]

Also want to add that last year in Michigan the foreign teams absolutely dominated the comp, for the exception of Wisconsin Madison.

I think you're forgetting about Cornell, Missouri S&T, Florida, Toronto, Cincinnati, and Toledo. I think if you gave some of those teams 6 months to nearly a year of extra time to tune their cars and more importantly, get ready for the static events, the top five could look a little different.

I'm really not trying to put down anyone's efforts, and I could not care less about what teams budgets are or who is running the latest and greatest gadget. Since I don't have a dog in the race it's hard for me to get too wrapped up in this.

But what I really think is going on here is that Wesley and the rest of the Oklahoma guys are just jealous of the super trick curing oven the S&T guys have access to for their composite work.

[ZAMR]

That's absolutely right. Jealous. Just kidding. But not really.

But seriously, wet-layup blows...

Zach Moorhead
Sooner Racing
Engine & Body

[Wesley]

Of course we're jealous! That's really all it boils down to. Jealous of a school that offers any courses pertaining to vehicles, of large teams, of carbon fiber wheels. Who on the earth isn't jealous when it comes to sexy parts? http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

But that doesn't mean money is always available if you just try hard enough. (cough...GM...cough)

I also have it on the authority of a long-time respectable judge (who will remain anonymous) of what TU Graz has in terms of budget, which largely shapes my opinions on whether or not they are poor.

[JamesWolak]

What happened to UTA, UWA, and MSU?

They were all no shows to MIS. I had them on my top ten list.

[michaelwaltrip]

1. if it costs 8 times as much to travel overseas than to go to a "local" event, that tells me something about the resources of some of the so-called "high budget" teams. some of them travel to 4~5 competitions a year, including at least one overseas. even if these teams paid out of their own pockets that tells me something because i know i could not afford to travel to europe right now.

2. personally, it's extremely hard not to be biased when watching some of the videos that these teams post. i really hate speculating about budgets, but for example, the video that TU Graz on their website of the engine on the dyno looks like it came straight off F1.com. how can you not speculate, comparing that to what your team personally has?

3. assuming that you know how much effort a team puts into fund-raising is just as inconsiderate as assuming you know the budgets and resources that another team has without first hand knowledge.

4. i believe i was the only person discussing outcomes based on last year's rules and i never complained about the template. i was only talking about fuel economy, but it's already been beaten to death anyway.

5. several members of my team as well as myself have talked at length with many of these teams, and it only furthers my belief that they are more well funded or resourced than many teams out there, including ours.

6. i think you have to have 5 years in industry before they'll let you be a design judge. otherwise think of the consequences of judges right out of school angry over how their team was denied a spot in the top 5-top 10 because of a better funded team that will be in his/her design queue.

either way, it's obviously not going to improve your own situation by getting caught up in what other teams have or do, but i can understand why some people feel the way they do. i'm positive that my attitude would change with a different frame of reference.

[RFR09]

This year was quite an accomplishment for us. We achieved very high static scores, (4th presentation, 18th cost, tied for 3rd design).
If it wasn't for a sticking micro switch, we would have finished endurance. Had a 7th place accel run, but apparently we hit a cone on the turn around! We took a very serious approach this year and became experts on every part of our car. We understood how to design the car as a whole and cannot express how important the tire data is. more later....

[michaelwaltrip]

Originally posted by JamesWolak:
What happened to UTA, UWA, and MSU?

They were all no shows to MIS. I had them on my top ten list.

MSU still has a tub in two pieces, UTA didn't even register i don't think, and UWA i can only assume didn't come because of the template penalty.

[flavorPacket]

Originally posted by MH:
Third of all, if you don't have enough money, PUT MORE EFFORT in finding extra funds!!

At what opportunity cost, Mike?

My team (Michigan) has 8 people who are useful. None of these people attended class from March through competition to get our car done. Are they supposed to stop building the car and pick up a phone to get more money?

If I had a team of 25 people, obviously some of them would be focused on money, but I don't. I have 8, and they are ALL needed to build our car. Should we build a shitty car one year because we were busy getting more sponsors? That's pretty hard to justify to team members (I've tried!).

Now don't get me wrong. I am certain that we have a top 5% budget. We have resources available to us that most teams could only dream of (inertia rig, proving grounds, brake dynos, etc). But with 8 people, all the money and resources in the world can only help so much.

At the end of the day, it comes down to people, and guess what, TUG's people are fantastic. Instead of advising people to look for money, Mike, I've always advised them to look for people. With the right team, the money simply comes.

Ryan Kraft
Technical Director, 2009
University of Michigan

[Mikey Antonakakis]

At the end of the day, it comes down to people, and guess what, TUG's people are fantastic. Instead of advising people to look for money, Mike, I've always advised them to look for people. With the right team, the money simply comes.

Ryan Kraft
Technical Director, 2009
University of Michigan
I agree strongly with this. There is no easy way to accomplish this, it takes dedication and hard work to make a car that will keep people interested. We are quickly building momentum as a team, we face many challenges, such as a small budget and a huge lack of interest in anything on our campus, but complaining about it will get us no where. I just want us to attract everyone we can to the club, because additional resources will follow additional dedicated members, as you said.

It was fun hanging out with you guys, we appreciate the hospitality. It good to know Columbia FSAE can at least beat MRacing in a minivan burnout contest http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif

[Zac]

UWA has a car that will pass the template rule. They just decided to do Formula Student Germany as their international comp this year.

[Dan G]

Originally posted by JamesWolak:
What happened to UTA, UWA, and MSU?

They were all no shows to MIS. I had them on my top ten list.

What about Cornell?

[UND09]

From being in the paddock next to them I would like to say that TU Graz is a great group of people that deserve everything that they achieved at MIS. They also did a great job of bringing people near our paddock to see our car so we thank them for that. I'll be an allum, but I can't wait to see how teams refine their cars to the new rules next year.

Luke Legatt
University of North Dakota
President, Design Lead, Frame/Body Lead

[Zac]

Cornell had some trouble getting through tech. they ended up missing skidpad and accel, and then running autocross in the rain.

[cjanota]

What is all of this about 2 sets of rules?

4.2.3: For 2009, teams whose cars do not comply with 4.1 or 4.2 will have 35 points deducted from their Design Event score.

American teams could have chosen to ignore the templates and taken the hit this year if they wanted to. Am I missing something here?

[ChuckT]

I just wanted to say congratulations to all the teams who competed. Our team was proud to compete with every school present, and it was especially gratifying to be considered competitive with TUG and ETS.

There's no point arguing about rules, the rules clearly allow for non-template compliant teams to compete, with the 35 point penalty. TUG was able to take the penalty and still win. Considering this, their overall performance is even more impressive. Fuel is the same story. We knew the rules this year, we chose to compete in the way we felt would give us the best performance.

Some teams are bigger, some are smaller. I know our team has tripled in size in only a few years, and that's in no small part to a couple of good leaders who focused heavily on recruiting.

Budgets also vary, but that again is part of the competition. I don't believe Graz is hugely better funded that the rest of us.(I know the design judge who claims this, but I also know at least 2 who claim otherwise) They do have a lot of non-monetary sponsorships, but I've found these are pretty easy to get compared to money. If your team isn't calling hundreds of companies every year, you have nothing to complain about.

I've been continually impressed with the level of maturity and kindness that teams have displayed at competitions, I only hope that teams can display this maturity on the forums.

Good luck in California and Germany everyone.

Charles
RIT Formula SAE
2008 Chassis/Suspension

P.S. Perhaps we should switch from bitching about the teams competing in Detroit to bitching about the atrocious preparation of the competition. Formula Student Germany blows away Detroit in every respect.

[Patefe]

There is nothing about "American teams"! It was the same thing for any team...that have properly read the rulebook...

[Kyle Walther]

Originally posted by cjanota:
What is all of this about 2 sets of rules?

4.2.3: For 2009, teams whose cars do not comply with 4.1 or 4.2 will have 35 points deducted from their Design Event score.

American teams could have chosen to ignore the templates and taken the hit this year if they wanted to. Am I missing something here?

Well damn that kind of destroys all of my arguments ... that's the last time i trust MalcolmG for rules info. :P

Well then big congrats to TUG for an amazing performance and marvelous vehicle.

Does anyone know the number of most overall wins in a single season?

[Wesley]

I'm pretty sure it's Stuttgart, with 3 or 4.

[JamesWolak]

Originally posted by Dan G:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by JamesWolak:
What happened to UTA, UWA, and MSU?

They were all no shows to MIS. I had them on my top ten list.

What about Cornell? </div></BLOCKQUOTE>


They were in my top ten list too. Had troubles with their brakes in tech and then got DQed in enduro for leaking oil on the track. I will have them in my top ten list next year too.

[MalcolmG]

Pat Clarke:
If a car does not pass the template check at FSG, it will simply not be permitted to compete in any dynamic event! There are only two exceptions to this, they are the cars from Australia which competed at the 2008 FSAEA event and so are still within their 1 year FS/FSAE ‘life’. These cars would be permitted to compete if they failed the templates check, but would be penalised 35 points and be automatically disqualified from the Design Finals. However, both these cars are built to the 2009 rules and after their experience in Australia, will pass the template checks.

To make this clear, the 35 point penalty and admission to the dynamic events is not available to any car that made its FS/FSAE debut in 2009.


http://www.formulastudent.de/a...-column-january-3/1/ (http://www.formulastudent.de/academy/pats-corner/advice-details/article/pats-column-january-3/1/)

Admittedly it refers to FS Germany, which means the US organisers could have a different view of things

[RacingManiac]

Originally posted by Zac:
[Cornell, Missouri S&T, Florida, Toronto, Cincinnati, and Toledo. I think if you gave some of those teams 6 months to nearly a year of extra time to tune their cars and more importantly, get ready for the static events, the top five could look a little different.



I'd like to mention that Toronto is technically "foreign"....http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif

[JamesWolak]

Just to comment on the TU Graz budget debate. If i were to throw $300,000 at my team this year we would still finish 3 days before MIS and get owned in design. Money won't fix all your problems.


So whats the word on UTA? I heard rumors they switched to hybrid?!? I might too after what happened to them in autocross last year.

[Mike Macie]

Originally posted by JamesWolak:
So whats the word on UTA? I heard rumors they switched to hybrid?!? I might too after what happened to them in autocross last year.

UTA is registered for West. I doubt it would be because of last year since West is run by the same people

[Kevlar]

Originally posted by Thomas Müller-Werth:
@michael:
I think it would have been better to wait 20 minutes before the endurance start to have a fair race.

Postponing the race 20 minutes still wouldn't have made it a "fair" race. Try being in the morning run group. I was one of the two Duke drivers for AutoX/Endurance. Due to a mechanical issue, we weren't able to run autox until it had begun to rain. We still placed 40th in autox. This put us as the 5th car off in the morning, running with teams that put down the same autox times in the dry as we ran in the wet.

After AutoX, we spoke with one of the event captains about a stipulation in the rules stating that "Based on the results of all dynamic events, and considering the operating conditions under which they were run, the endurance event captain may, at his sole discretion, move teams to different positions within the starting order." Having already placed 7th in acceleration and 15th in skidpad, we thought it was pretty obvious that we should run in the afternoon run group. Apparently the event coordinators didn't agree, or perhaps didn't have precedent to implement that rule, so we were forced to run in the damp morning conditions with teams running 30 seconds or more slower per lap (sorry, Navy). We still managed to place 13th in endurance, and 11th overall, which were both records for Duke, so I can't be too disappointed, but it's bittersweet because we know we would have done much better had we been allowed to run with similar-pace cars.

I hope the event organizers reexamine the inclement-weather policies for next year.

[Pete Marsh]

Congratulations to TUG on their win! Another awsome car it seems.
Also RIT and ETS looking very competitive and with a little more test and development time, surely hopefull of turning the tables on the European teams in Germany.

You must consider that the car TUG (and UAS ??) brought to MIS, and the teams running them, have the experience and knowlage from a couple of comps prior to MIS. I think this is the real reason for the apparent high performance of the foreign teams, nothing to do with budget. I believe this was the reason for the existance of VIR, so more local teams could be on their second comp at MIS.

At the German comp most of the top teams will be on their second comp with the car. This will make for a much more even comp than MIS and I for one am not ready to concead to anyone just yet, no matter how good their dyno is!

I have a little knowledge of Stutgart's team structure, training and succession. Its very impressive. Imagine your strongest team member, that has 4 years team experience, each on a different section of the car/team and has done few comps and static events. Well thats half their team, and the other half will be there next year. Its a very slick outfit, they could have brought a Baja car to Aus and still kicked butt! I suspect Stutgart are not unique within Europe, maybe this is even common, and UWAM for one, and I suspect many, many other teams would do well to try and see how they have achieved this team support and strength, and try to get some of it. Even from and educational standpoint, these teams are producing a lot of strong graduate engineers.

UWA has a template compliant car and is going to Germany this year as our Internation comp. We think we have a shot despite the fuel economy and autocross points changes. Time will tell.

What happened to Cincinatti and Florida? Did Oakland finish enduro?

Pete

[Zac]

There goes Pete with his logic and wisdom again...when you get to Luxembourg tell the guys in the lab I said hi.

I'm not sure about Florida, but Cincinatti was taken out of endurance by a 10 cent part failure. They had a pretty interesting suspension setup, they were running front and rear monoshocks and roll dampers that ran the full length of the car. I don't know that they ever got it dialed in(to me it looked like the spool they were running gave them a lot of issues), but I think the car had a ton of potential.

[D Collins Jr]

James: UTA is still doing FSAE (I doubt Dr. Bob would ever stop doing FSAE as a matter of fact). You're thinking of Texas A&M - College Station, who transformed their FSAE program to a Hybrid program after last season.

Kevlar: That's a very tough break. That's a very significant burden on the organizer's, and one I wouldn't want to undertake, but just for the record, I have seen them change the run order for endurance. But be very proud of your performance! I'm quite impressed!

I think it's interesting to combine Pete and James's thoughts to realize how critical organization is to excellence. Congratulations to Graz (both schools, actually. They've been to the US every year that I've been around, and done quite well. An impressive feat).

[JamesWolak]

Hmmmm, something tells me UTA changed their schedule around and will be taking their 2009 Cali car to 2010 Michigan.

You can do that right?

[Yellow Ranger]

Maybe- that's Michigan State's plan

[VFR750R]

There was at least one car at VIR that ran Cali 2008...and didn't pass the new templates.

[W van Nus]

I snapped quite a few pictures at MIS, but most are of my team (Georgia Tech):

http://www.flickr.com/photos/w...s/72157618133051452/ (http://www.flickr.com/photos/wvannus/sets/72157618133051452/)

Email me if you see a pic of your car you like and want a full-rez file.

[MH]

My team (Michigan) has 8 people who are useful. None of these people attended class from March through competition to get our car done. Are they supposed to stop building the car and pick up a phone to get more money?

Ryan Kraft
Technical Director, 2009
University of Michigan

Hats off if you manage to build the car with 8 people, really.
All I'm saying is that there are more ways of getting what you want. It all starts with good organization. We realized a couple of years ago that we absolutely needed motivated people and not just to build the car. Especially in departments such as sponsoring, PR and recruitment. I know it's not said enough, but having a good sponsoring/PR/recruitment team is as equally important as having a kick-ass technical team.
So maybe you can't get more people that are "technical" minded. Then try to get people to are more "non-technical" minded. Picking up a phone, writing countless letters to companies takes a lot of time and it's not the most rewarding work, but it has to be done. The trick is also to let your appreciation know to them. I cannot emphasize enough how important a good "non-tech" team is. You should have people that are 24/7 thinking creatively about how to approach companies (remember, you're selling engineers), organize sponsor meet&greets, contacting those professors with wide networks in industry, trying to see whether you can publish a paper based on the optimization of the usage of the left handed screwdriver for the annual Left Handed Tools convention etc.

Another thing, we start recruiting well ahead of the start of the new season. We try to get newly interested people to come and see one of the events, that works like a charm. They see the atmosphere, the competition and they have already an idea what to expect when they start designing the car.

Running a successful team is as much about engineering as about management. The teams that do well, have both fields covered.
Please don't assume that they just wake up with a pile of money under their pillows.

cheers,
Miki Hegedus
Delft University of Technology

[Big Bird]

Congrats to TU Graz on taking out the big one. From our first encounter with them at FSUK in 2004 it was obvious that they were a very slick outfit, and it is only fitting that they have finally taken out one of the big US events.

Cheers to ETS as well, always very strong competitors and I'm so glad to see them featuring in the outright placings and not just embarrassing us all in Design http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif Good grief Jude, you have hung around these circles longer than I have. I hope you are enjoying the moment, it is well deserved.

To RIT, great to see a well proven traditional design right up there and showing you don't need carbon to be successful. The RIT teams from around year 2000 or so were the benchmark teams at the early Oz events, and certainly inspiration for our own team when we were still learning the ropes. From memory they were the team to beat at the first Formula Student event in about '98 or '99 as well, so it is good to see they are still kicking goals. I hope Nando and Bob (names?) and the rest of the alumni are appropriately pleased.

It's amusing to see the usual speculation about other teams' budgets, and even the "illegality" of the Graz car. The rules were the same for everyone.

From my hand calcs, the possible 2-3kg difference (max) between a template compliant and a non-template car is worth maybe 5 dynamic points at most, so if they are willing to wear the 35 points design penalty then good luck to them.

As for the budget argument - if you think you can't compete with a TU Graz for fancy materials and the like, then don't. Come at them from left field and wipe them in fuel economy, or cost. Commit resources right from the start and do a kick-arse business presentation. Blow the Design judges away with some cheap home-grown methods to collect your own tyre data. There are a myriad of ways to win this event, but one sure way to lose it is to spend your energy worrying about everyone else.

Anyway, hope it was an enjoyable event. Attending Michigan a few years back was certainly the highlight of my years at uni, and here is hoping the current world economic woes don't hurt this comp too much.

Cheers,

[exFSAE]

Originally posted by flavorPacket:
My team (Michigan) has 8 people who are useful. None of these people attended class from March through competition to get our car done. Are they supposed to stop building the car and pick up a phone to get more money?

8 good people? Damn dude I wish we had that many on my old team. Was closer to 3-5.

In any event, I am in complete agreement with Geoff. There are a lot of ways of do well in this competition. Worrying about other teams, and carbon, titanium, trick gizmos and the like.. is not one of them.

For US teams... start in May. Get organized. Have a plan and a schedule. Those couple items are critical. You'll never have time to do EVERYTHING you want, so the earlier you start and the better organized you are.. the better off you will be.

[Smith]

Big Bird: Its great to hear that we are respected and that our "traditional" steel tube and 4 cylinder car is still something to look at. Nando was there for the dynamic events and was very happy to see the team returning to its benchmark from years past.

Thank you to everyone who has commended us on our preformance. It was no accident and we have one of the strongest teams we have had in years.

A few people said they felt sorry for RIT. This is wrong as we had a great competiton and the rules are the rules. If you don't know them going into it, you're doing it wrong.

We will see everyone in California and then overseas in Germany.

[Charlie]

Congrats to all the teams. Another great competition, wish I could have been there.

The SAE Staff decides if a car is legal or illegal. Anyone who takes it upon themselves to judge otherwise is wrong and sends the wrong message.

You can disagree with the rules, but every car that passes the rules per the judges is a LEGAL car.

[Thomas MuWe]

@RIT: You were so incredible fast....and I am still disappointed that you had overtaken us during endu. :-)
I would have loved to see our car against yours and TU Graz and ETS racing on dry tyres on a dry track.
Your drivers were amazing on the damp track being able to beat Missouri with spin(s) (I think there were 2). Well done!!!

For me an impressive car was Penn State. As simple this car is, so well it fits to the competition - from my point of view. And it should be an idol for all the complainers here in the forum!

Being back in Europe now I am wondering if anyone has a video of our last lap of the endurance in and after the hairpin at the one end of the track. If so, please let me know.

suspension jr08/jr08evo
joanneum racing graz

[JamesWolak]

Originally posted by kutty2009:
I am a resident of Michigan planning on attending a 4 years university in the state of Michigan. Schools I would like to know about are Michigan, Michigan State, Western Michigan, Central Michigan, Wayne State, and any other 4-year university located in the state.
=============================================
andro (http://fizogen.com/)
tummy tuck (http://www.tummytuckguide.com)


Whats up with the spam in your signature?

And this is definitely the wrong place to be posting on this but ohh well.

Michigan FSAE teams:
UofM- Ann Arbor
UofM- Dearborn
MSU
Wayne State
Ferris State
Western Michigan
Michigan Tech
Oakland University
Lawrence Tech
SVSU

I am from Lawrence Tech and if I had a chance to do it all over again i would have gone to UofM or MSU. They're your best bet for FSAE too

[Big Bird]

I think you have responded to a spambot. There are a few on here that seem to pick out key words in a topic heading, paste some slab of text found on a forum elsewhere on the net (thus the slightly out of context response), and then slap a bit of spam in the signature.

Unless "kutty2009" would like to inform us otherwise?

Cheers,

[JamesWolak]

Thats the best spam bot ever

[willhalt]

Originally posted by MRacing_girl:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Auerbach:
Brian, I second that feeling as an alum. I already told my boss today would be less productive because I'd be on the forum looking at pics. Another ex-fsae co-worker and I spent the morning reminiscing.

My school (Texas) isn't at MIS, hopefully they'll be making it to Cali.

Good luck to all! Looks like the weather is a little damp?

Lucky me, my boss isn't even here today. Go Blue! So proud to see a great looking Maize and Blue car out there...just wish I could actually be at comp instead of tracking from my desk.

And as far as the organizers being stressed out...like was mentioned with all the sponsors not being there, they had a hard time getting volunteers / judges / etc. for all of the events this year thanks to our lovely economy. I volunteered at VIR and talked to Kaley some... it's not been easy on them and they've had to make some behind the scenes cuts in terms extras that normally happen at comp. They're trying I promise and everyone there still really wants to be there...they just don't have the support they usually do. I feel bad for not being able to help out there this week but I couldn't take off work again... VIR was a blast though and thanks to everyone who showed up for making that as fun as it was! GO BLUE! </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

I definitely enjoyed my stay at VIR. Those Skid Pad workers did a great job, plus the scenery was nice to look at ;]

[Big Bird]

Originally posted by JamesWolak:
Thats the best spam bot ever

Did you notice that it did the same thing to you in your thread about the Texas Autocross Weekend? I thought that was quite ironic.

Cheers,

[JamesWolak]

Originally posted by Big Bird:

Did you notice that it did the same thing to you in your thread about the Texas Autocross Weekend? I thought that was quite ironic.

Cheers,

Yeah but the bot had to go to the website and copy/past that information. I still dont think its a spam bot.

EDIT: It's a bot. I am dumb