These discussions here about aero are why I believe that aero is a part of competition that gets weighted far too heavily in the competition. Yes, it is currently all but impossible for a non-aero car (I'm talking no wings or undertrays - Car with suspension and tires) to win any dynamic event other than acceleration and fuel efficiency, but as many have said, this competition ISN'T about racing. Yes you can say that it is rather easy to get CFD and apply your basic fluids classes to make a relatively competent aero package, but coming from a small team, when it comes down to it you need all hands on deck getting your car to competition, and you really can't spare a few members to design and make an aero package that works, and those who you can spare may not necessarily be the most capable making the aero also?

It would seem to me if the design competition is truly about the team members understanding and applying the basics, and knowing why they did everything they did, it shouldn't be a punishment if you decided that investigating an aero package was an inneficient use of resources. Its pretty easy to see from a sim that aero will make your car faster, but if your goal is a cheap, simple, efficient car (in the original spirit of the competition) then I'd have to say lack of aero wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. If you're using the "weekend warrior" design goal by having all your car cheap and easy to fix in the case of damage (monocoque vs space frame) then you should be able to use the same excuse for not having aero (getting balance correct can be difficult, amateur drivers really won't be able to use it to its full effect, it would add levels of complexity to your package).

Also, with the amount of teams who said they're there to learn rather than to win: I'd rather a team be realistic about their expectations than think they're better than everyone else. If any person involved in this competition truly believes that a small team with no money can win this competition outright, they're delusional. Can they do good? Yes. We did pretty well last year with one of the smallest overall budgets you can get (and a lot of out-of-pocket purchases). But really the gap between the top 5-10 teams in the world and everyone else is really quite large, and the required resources to get that next level higher becomes nearly exponential.

This may be a bit of a rant, but it is.