Motorsport or Design?

[Bemo]

It has become more important to ‘win the competition’ than to learn along the way.

To get back to this particular sentence, I'd like to say that we in Stuttgart always had officially the major goal to win the competition. The learning is a side effect which is resulting directly from this.

My opinion always was that in FSAE you get a very clear major design goal: to score as high as possible at competition. To do so you have to understand quite a lot about how a car works.
I never liked the idea of implementing fancy stuff just for having done it. This is not engineering, that's just playing around.

What a lot of people oversee is that the most basic car is already an extremely complex system and nearly impossible to understand completely. Therefore you don't need to build a lot of fancy stuff to learn a lot. For me it is much more interesting to learn how a car is working in general.
Over the years we had similar discussions within the team. There were always people who wanted to design new stuff before they were near of understanding the old stuff.

First part is about the official goal of my former teams, the rest is just my personal opinion.

[Mike Cook]

I don't understand this. If you look at the top 10 cars from each competition, they are all pretty well engineered. If you look at GFR, they not only win design but dominate the whole competition. Looking at the last couple years there is a strong correlation with winning design and winning the entire competition. Have we ever had a real dark horse come up out of nowhere with a great driver and dominate and win the entire competition? No...not that I can recall.

The competition has become increasingly popular. Why should we change the formula?


Also, not sure I agree with Claude. There are some really good drivers out there. We have had drivers who go on to be top level SCCA drivers. Looking back at the guys from UTA, Kansas, UMR, we all had pretty good drivers. It is very unlikely that someone is going to bring a ringer in and beat our times by much. Not enough to out weigh a poor design score...

[Claude Rouelle]

MIke Cook,

SCCA is not a good enough / large enough reference as far as driver skills measurement. Think a bit larger. Think global. In SCCA there is an A for Amateur. Even is there is potential prodigy Senna or Schumacher-like in SCCA (which I doubt because US hasn't been able to produce a good F1 driver since Mario Andretti) this driver has not yet been gaining experience competing 20 weekends a year with la creme de la creme. Think real professional drivers such as DTM, WEC, WRC, some ALMS and Japanese GT500 or OZ V8 Supercar drivers ... (you can only dream to have one day one good F1 driver in your car) then you have a reference. When you put a driver like Mike Rockenfeller (WEC/Le Mans) in just a few laps in your FSAE / FS car you immediately see on the track and on the data (braking distance to start with) where they make the difference. Plus tons of comments on ergonomy and handling than most students would never notice. Ask Stuttgart.

Some drivers are better than others in FS / FSAE. I have seen a C- car doing A- results (ISAT in Germany for example because one of their driver was a decent Formula Renault driver) but in 15 years and a minimum of 5 FSAE / FS event each year I never saw FSAE / FS car being driven at the limit. Maybe at at 80 % at best.

Want a criteria? Show me the lap times of a stint of one driver finishing the endurance in the top 10 where the lap time standard deviation is within 1 % (except maybe the first 2 laps on cold tires). That is +/- 0.5 second on a about 50 second average lap time. That means a driver who is QUICK and CONSISTENT. Have you seen such results? I could be wrong but haven't. THAT would be a reference.

[Mike Cook]

I agree with most of your points. Universities can learn a lot about thier car by putting a quality driver in it. However, even though SCCA is amature, there are a lot of quality drivers who have been autocrossing for decades running dozens of weekends a year. While pro drivers are probably better in general, this doesn't necessarily mean they will be good right off the bat at autocrossing (thinking F1 drivers who transitioned to NASCAR).


My point really is that increasing the driver skill starts to become diminishing returns because of the way the point system works. Even if I concede that top level driver may be 1-2 seconds faster than a top level autocrosser, that doesn't exactly equate to that many points. Certainly not enough to make up for not making it to design finals.

See you at MIS?

Mike.

Ps. lap times for MIS 2010:
43.751 43.522 43.468 43.465 43.953 43.161 43.362 43.613 44.066 44.630 44.171 43.478 43.138 43.673

Fontana 2011 (lots of traffic and tires fell off)
67.083 64.546 64.810 65.931 65.914 65.636 65.804 67.449 65.953 67.533

[Claude Rouelle]

Mike Coach

"Ps. lap times for MIS 2010:
43.751 43.522 43.468 43.465 43.953 43.161 43.362 43.613 44.066 44.630 44.171 43.478 43.138 43.673"

Top ten?

Your F1 to Nascar is a bad example. It is a negative slope. Nascar to F1 that would be a positive slope. But it ain't gonna happen, you all.

Yes I will be at MIS next Wednesday morning. With great pleasure

[Charles Kaneb]

Originally posted by Claude Rouelle:
In SCCA there is an A for Amateur. Even is there is potential prodigy Senna or Schumacher-like in SCCA (which I doubt because US hasn't been able to produce a good F1 driver since Mario Andretti) this driver has not yet been gaining experience competing 20 weekends a year with la creme de la creme.

Some drivers are better than others in FS / FSAE. I have seen a C- car doing A- results (ISAT in Germany for example because one of their driver was a decent Formula Renault driver) but in 15 years and a minimum of 5 FSAE / FS event each year I never saw FSAE / FS car being driven at the limit. Maybe at at 80 % at best.

Want a criteria? Show me the lap times of a stint of one driver finishing the endurance in the top 10 where the lap time standard deviation is within 1 % (except maybe the first 2 laps on cold tires). That is +/- 0.5 second on a about 50 second average lap time. That means a driver who is QUICK and CONSISTENT. Have you seen such results? I could be wrong but haven't. THAT would be a reference.

A) SCCA stands for "Sports Car Club of America". They have organized professional races in the past, most notably CanAm.

B) America's best drivers aren't going to go down a path that leads to F1. They head to where their sponsors can see 'em and where they can be paid - NASCAR and World of Outlaws. We had an ace driver a couple years ago who raced a "Late Model". He was exceptionally smooth and good at shock tuning - and now does this for a living at GM. Stock car and sprint car seasons are much longer than the pavement open-wheel seasons. 25 races a year would be a "part-time" schedule.

C) Don't you remember last year's endurance at Lincoln?

[Charles Kaneb]

Originally posted by Claude Rouelle:
Mike Coach

"Ps. lap times for MIS 2010:
43.751 43.522 43.468 43.465 43.953 43.161 43.362 43.613 44.066 44.630 44.171 43.478 43.138 43.673"

Top ten?

Your F1 to Nascar is a bad example. It is a negative slope. Nascar to F1 that would be a positive slope. But it ain't gonna happen, you all.

Yes I will be at MIS next Wednesday morning. With great pleasure

Ask Kimi Raikkonen (2007 F1 champion, no top-tens in NASCAR) or Juan Pablo Montoya (1999 CART champion back when that mattered, 1 FIA decision away from being F1 champion in 2003, 1 NASCAR win) their opinion on the difficulty of NASCAR. The cars suck. The drivers, engineers, and technicians don't.

[Mike Cook]

I think 3rd in 2010, second in 2011, fourth overall both years.

I will be flying into DTW wednesday morning. Looking forward to seeing everyone again.

Originally posted by Claude Rouelle:
Mike Coach

"Ps. lap times for MIS 2010:
43.751 43.522 43.468 43.465 43.953 43.161 43.362 43.613 44.066 44.630 44.171 43.478 43.138 43.673"

Top ten?

Your F1 to Nascar is a bad example. It is a negative slope. Nascar to F1 that would be a positive slope. But it ain't gonna happen, you all.

Yes I will be at MIS next Wednesday morning. With great pleasure

[Claude Rouelle]

Charles,

You think within the US. I think as citizen of the world. I feel the need to measure myself and our company to the biggest and to be facing in the biggest challenge. I think Indianapolis, Sebring and Pikes Peak but also think Le Mans, Monaco, Nurburgring, Suzuka, Bathurst, Interlagos (all circuits where we work with consulting customers). It is a different perspective. I respect yours.

About Nascar to F1 (not the other way round) you did not get my point: tell me a driver who went from being successful in Nascar to get successful in F1? The drivers going F1 to Nascar are at the end of their career (Kimi so eclectic (alos in Rally) that he is the exception and the team was not at his level) and they do not have the same motivations / skills slopes.

What I and other judges do remember from Lincoln is some issues in the design and specifically the strange, very unusual to say the least, discrepancy between your suspended weight distribution and your anti-roll stiffness distribution. Your car and drivers were quick but you could have made them much quicker.

[Claude Rouelle]

Coming back to the title of this forum topic "Motorsport or Design" instigated by Kevin Hayward I would say the following (I wanted to do this for a while)

- If any choice had to be made I would prefer to have FSAE / FS being the university side of Motorsport than the university side of amateur racing. I have seen a clear tendency of some design judges (especially in the UK. Boom! I said it!) reluctant to innovation and who would prefer to see universities building cars similar to the hill climb or Formula Ford cars that they build or drove 20 or 30 years ago.

- The automotive industry has serious challenges: weight reduction, safety, emission, energy consumption, traffic, recycling, global competition, manufacturing cost, less energy demanding and less polluting manufacturing ....! It needs to constantly reinvent itself. Do we want universities to imagine the 2030 mobility solutions (I said mobility not even cars) or do we want universities to replicate the 60's and 70's cars? Universities are the best think tank for innovation, problem solving and out-of-the-box thinking. Because they have less bureaucracy, more Independence, more freedom, less "industry dogmatism". We should let universities explore these paths. In that case a FSAE / FS car could look more like an F1 or a concept car than a club racer. So what? By the way,...speaking about FS UK, one of the very good thing is that they allow Hydrogen cars.

- If I had a son who could work with a FSAE / FS team which collaborates with a engine developer like AMG or Formula one team aerodynamics engineers like the ones Sauber or the Dallara simulator I would sure be very happy for him! In fact I do encourage such collaboration.

- HOWEVER when you have a such a team which comes with a technology marvel that no student can explain and it becomes clear that the work comes more from their industrial partner / sponsor than from the students, I will condemn it with the harshest words and the poorest score. EVERYBODY lose: the students, the sponsor, the judges, the while community. We make a fool of ourselves. We lose our soul. It becomes a joke. Innovation yes but innovation with brains, STUDENT's brains.

- What I have seen in the last 10 years in FSAE / FS is:

A) Teams more and more functioning as New York Stock Exchange investors looking for the best return of their time and money investment in points. Fair. Yes, OK, the goal is to win. But what about out of the box thinking, what about new material or simpler, lighter, stiffer, cheaper solutions? What about cleverness, invention, originality, and creativity? I am not a big fan of solid axle or, to take one of the latest examples, the Sacli suspension, but if somebody comes with good arguments I will sure listen. If on top of that they demonstrate on the track that the car is reliable and decently fast, I will be happy for them and recognize that my opinion was probably biased or even unfair. I was at first not a big fan of the UWA last concept. In total honesty I did not understand it at first glance (hey Z, sorry, I can't know everything) but the UWA guys took the time to cope with my ignorance and frontal honesty and I became more convinced. If a new concept car is FINISHED and WORKING (that is where UWA failed), if the team knows how to play the game with good engineering arguments and prior opinion / authorization from the deign judges /rule committee especially if their solutions are "tangent" (that is where UWA also failed), if such innovation work is materialized by decent performances and reliability (even if the car is not the quickest)... then I believe that these students will probably have acquired more knowledge, skills and confidence for their career with 700 points than the winner at 900 points. Teams may have becoming a bit too reasonable and less daring. I have in my mind 2 examples of Formula student innovations which look very promising that were not pursued because the team thought there was too much risk and because "it did not look like last year winner".... Hmm

B) Students use computers too much and not their brain enough. I am not against computers or software! We create and sell simulations software and we use it constantly in our racing consulting operations. But you won't find creativity or team work efficiency and fun in your laptop! I see less concept and equation being discussed and written on paper and more numbers input with rush and without enough thinking in Matlab, Solidworks and Excel. Laptops are often the comfort zone, the cave were here we can retreat, away from other's confrontational judgement (at least momentarily), where we can lose ourselves in our intellectual dreams.... The worst answer I hear (more and more) from student in design competition is "because the software X tells us that this is what to do" They give away their decision power and their intelligence to the machine...

C) A touch more whining and a touch less ability to know how to have fun. Probably because winning is becoming too much of a focus compared to the learning experience.

But I always have 100 % fun at any FSAE / FS competition (can't wait next week Michigan) and I am always amazed by the exceptional spirit of camaraderie of any event

My 2 cents observations