Formula Student Germany 2013

[Bemo]

Originally posted by RollingCamel:
No rusty car this time?

Can anyone brief me about their take on Alexandria University team efforts?

I also can't tell how the car got damaged during transport to Germany, but it definitely was the case.
But being honest, the car wouldn't have passed scrutineering anyway. There were quite a lot of issues which weren't rules compliant. The chief scrutineer had a long talk to them on Friday to tell them what they have to do in future for being able to take part in the dynamic events.

The performance of the Indian teams differed. Like last year the best Indian car came from Orion Racing. They didn't have big problems getting all their stickers, so they were able to start in all dynamic events. Unfortunately this time they weren't able to pass Endurance, I don't no why.

As far as I know there was only one other Indian team who got all stickers and managed to at least start in Endurance, but didn't get far. They had quite some trouble passing scrutineering and then the attachment of the steering column broke in the test track. So they couldn't take part in the other dynamic events.
Personally I saw only one of the other Indian cars and this was very far from passing tech. Both templates didn't fit, frame wasnt conform to their SES, problems with driver's harness attachment and so on.
My impression is that Orion racing gets a great benefit from being hosted by the Karlsruhe team every year. Like this they have the chance to learn from an experienced team. This explains in my opinion, why they made a much better progress in the last years than the other Indian teams. Maybe it would be a good idea for the others to see if they also can find a local team which is willing to help them.
When teams from America or Australia come to Europe it is quite common, that they ask a local team to host them and don't have problems to find one (and also the other way round, when European teams go overseas).

[Jakob]

Great Event! I love the live stream/timing!

Will the Endurance Laptimes be published?

[Luniz]

Can anyone fill me in about the sportsmanship award, what did the Bialystok do to get it? I somehow wasn't paying attention at the award ceremony. Beer might have got to do with that

[Z]

Originally posted by TMichaels:
... Shiyan got penalised in design for being 12kg overweight after Endurance according to FSC rule 7.2.

Tobias (or Bemo),

Any idea how the Shiyan car got 12 kg heavier???

I can only guess that they might have changed wheels and/or tyres (+3kg per?), and/or different seat?

Also, any opinions on the general standard of the Chinese teams?

Z

[Z]

http://www.formulastudent.de/u...oring_eff_all_01.pdf

Also interesting is the proportional relationship between average-lap-time-in-Enduro and fuel-used-per-lap, for the whole field.

Clearly, the faster you go, the less fuel you use!

My guess is that this is partly due to the faster cars having better tuned engines, but mainly due to the faster cars having higher corner speeds, hence braking less into the corners, and accelerating less (ie. burning less fuel) out of the corners.

Z

[Bemo]

They claimed this was due to a different set of wheels. So we weighed all tires and rims they had with themselves and didn't find any combination which explained this difference.

About the Chinese teams in general, originally five or six registered I think, in the end two of them showed up with a car which was able to collect all stickers.
Biggest problem is, that they usually speak very poorly English, so it is very difficult to give them advice (especially because they have the attitude to pretend they understood you although they didn't...).
Taking into account, that the whole competition doesn't exist in China for very long, their efforts are quite impressive. The two cars I've seen made it through tech, one of them finished Endurance with a fair performance. Also building quality was quite OK.
I guess the biggest issue is that it is too easy to get through tech in China. They usually can't believe that they don't pass on first try, although they didn't have any issues at the Chinese event.
But I guess the organisers there are like the teams still in a learning process and if they look for help from the organisers of other competitions that should improve soon.

[TMichaels]

AFAIK the car has not been completely wet when the initial weighing took place, but this has not been confirmed yet.

[mdavis]

Originally posted by TMichaels:
AFAIK the car has not been completely wet when the initial weighing took place, but this has not been confirmed yet.

Tobias,

Can the teams not declare 0, 50% or full fuel on initial weight in?

-Matt

[TMichaels]

No, we define that the car has to be completely wet including fuel being filled up to the limit as otherwise tilting the car and checking for liquids leaking does not make sense. We weigh them directly after tilt. The weighing station is 2m away from tilt and the teams are directly send to weighing after passing tilt.
These are the first weight penalties in 7 years of FSG as far as I am aware of.

The weight is also the official design event weight which is also why it is important to weigh all teams in the same state. We allow a 5kg tolerance up and down before applying penalties. It should be no rocket science to match that.

[SNasello]

Tobias,

the car from Esslingen weighed in 4.6kg under its design weight, but they actually added a larger battery before the endurance (500g). Without that they would have been underweight according to this rule. You don't get a 5kg difference from tire and brake pad wear over 22km.

I have heard from other teams also, and from personal experience in Hockenheim 2011, that those scales aren't particularly accurate. We re-weighed our car in 2011 before design because we couldn't believe we were over 200kg, and our scales (right after weighing) showed 193kg.