I'm in my Formula Student team (read MRT cars but from other Unis) and went along to competion for the endurance day yesterday. As I'm only a 2nd year I haven't had an aweful lot to do with the car and took the option to just observe again this year as I felt I'd just get in the way (as it turned out, there were too many people already!). It also gave me a chance to practice more motorsport photography, and as the barriers and marshalls are fairly relaxed and tend to assume that if you sitting there with a huge lense that you're mature enough not to be an idiot and get too close, it's possible to get into some good positions that would normally be closed off in normal motorsport.

So....I've only had a chance to look at the 300+ photos I took and edit a few, so here they are so far:

This is Helsinki's (Finland) car is sponspored rather obviously by Audi. They probably have one of the biggest budgets and it shows with adjustable traction control, a really excellent turbo, awesome bodywork and a very professional pit area. As you can tell I loved it!











Luleå had this really nicely painted helmet:



And talking of helmets:



Trust the 'crazy' Dutch to have cool air intakes on their car (Eindhoven Uni):



One of the many German teams:



Teams came from as far as Toronto and Delhi:





The Chalmers (Sweden) car was perhaps the fastest there...:



...largely due to this little baby strapped to the top of the engine....a Superchager



What a shame it didn't finish the endurance



This car was perhaps the meanest looking one of the day. It was incredibly quick too until the exhaust fell off it! It sounded great, but sadly got pulled in because of it!



I'll post some more tomorrow Took some good ones of the planes in the background too, but they're for another thread

Really cool cars these days!! More pics more pics!!!

Nice shots man!

I can't believe the Canadian entry is the worst looking one there...


Some of those things are mean looking, I'd love to have a go in one! Was the track setup like an autocross, or how was it done?

Quote from MAGGOT :

Nice shots man!

I can't believe the Canadian entry is the worst looking one there...


Some of those things are mean looking, I'd love to have a go in one!

What he said

Cool pictures Looking forward seeing the rest

If you don't mind me asking, what kind/model of camera took these shots?

Thanks

Just thought I had to

http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?p=165836#post165836

Well...the Canadians amongst you should be pleased to hear that the 'ugly' Toronto car won the event again! Thankfully it's not soley based on who makes the fastest and most technically advanced car but a mixture of the following:

Design - They judges look for innovation and most importantly justification of the design. If a team just turned up with some hand built 600cc V10 that revved to 16,000rpm (not entirely unfeasible....a US team built a 610cc V8 a few years back....sadly they forgot that the car had to start itself and didn't install a starter motor!) if they couldn't say what the advantages of doing it were. Whist cars like the RedBull sponsored Gratz car and the Helsinki car look awesome, they may not have justified the design very well.

Cost - This is a bit of a wierd one. It only really takes into account the amount of money you actually spend....so if companies give you stuff for free (which is usually what happens) then it's quite easy to stay within the suggested maximum spend which is something like £15,000. In reality even our car which has a very small budget compared to most would probably cost over £50,000 if you were to pay for everything. Something like the Gratz car which had a cast rear diff and gearbox, a carbon fibre tub and incredibly well machined suspension components may be upwards of £250,000 to £500,000!

Presentation - A presentation that the team gives about the car

Dynamic Events:

Acceleration - Speaks for itself!

Skidpan - The fastest time to do a figure of eight twice

Autocross - Fastest time

Endurance - 11 laps split between two drivers. You get a massive number of points for just finishing this, and then obviously more the higher up the times you finish.

There's no racing in it at all, and the circuit is very resitictive. A shame for some of the better cars, but certainly a good thing for some of the slightly less well built cars.

Cool skin Knight_Atack Glad I was of some inspiration. I'll post a few more pictures up later so you have some better reference

Right...here are some more Completely forgot I took the first two :P :?





Thought I should probably post some of our car :P









Now just some more randoms













And for good measure....some more Helsinki Poly pictures

Yeah agreed, nice photos.

Quote from Vancouver_Canuck :

If you don't mind me asking, what kind/model of camera took these shots?

Thanks

Nikon D70 The lense I was using is a Sigma 100-300 f4.

Incidently....you may like this picture I took at Christmas :P

The Helsinki car sure looks cool Great pics again

Hey ArosaMike: Did you made some pics of our car? #19 - Technical University of Braunschweig.

Not the best bodywork, because we had to build it in the last two days because our sponsor failed...but the rest of the car really rocks.

We got fifth in the sprint(autocross), with only two hours testing on sunday from 10 to 12 pm right before the competition. (Cars and drivers)

Greets,
Warper

PS: The autocross layout was indeed really quick this year.

Awesome Pictures there. Loughborough Uni? Is that our Tristan driving

Naa, he's driving in a straight line

Lol Shaun. I didn't get to drive the BRU06 or whatever it was called (Brunels current car). The drivers was a past champion of Formula Libre karting or something... And I can do corners me, so shut it or I'll spike your drink

Sadly some of them aren't the best and are a bit blurred but it seems I got a few of your car Looked good, although you also didn't finish the endurance if I remember right What happened with your sponsor? Were they gonna make your bodywork for you?

Just found this awesome video made by Helsinki:

http://www.formula.stadia.fi/videot/Gotland_ring.mpg

I'd forgotten that it's the same Uni that made the Raceabout that's in LFS :P No wonder they have such a good Formula Student team!

Another good video here

http://www.formula.stadia.fi/v ... 006_first_indoor_test.wmv

Quote from ArosaMike :

Well...the Canadians amongst you should be pleased to hear that the 'ugly' Toronto car won the event again!

In light of this new evidence...The car is beautiful:lovies3d:


Some great pics in there, and Knight_Attack, that is one fine looking skin there

Looks like a great event!

Great pictures too

Did that Helsinki Audi car win? For how much money they seemed to have spent on the car and other things, they seem pretty professional :o

(Edit ok, Canadian car won, but what was this Audi car's place?)

Like ArosaMike said all teams have the same budget.

Helsinki Polytechics team is still probably one of the smallest. Used to be under ten guys and the succeeded good back then too. About the design I think they still use the School of Art in Helsinki to do the design. The reason they are good is that they have great partners and great guys working on the car. For example the ECU is made by one guy (not in the actual team though).

I know few of the guys who used to be on the team and actually I made some little testing for the team with lfs couple of years ago.

Quote from Tege :

Like ArosaMike said all teams have the same budget.

Helsinki Polytechics team is still probably one of the smallest. Used to be under ten guys and the succeeded good back then too. About the design I think they still use the School of Art in Helsinki to do the design. The reason they are good is that they have great partners and great guys working on the car. For example the ECU is made by one guy (not in the actual team though).

I know few of the guys who used to be on the team and actually I made some little testing for the team with lfs couple of years ago.

Awesome....yeah I like the Helsinki car because I think generally most of it is done by the team. The way I understand it, ETS (Canada) never did so well with there cars because half of the thing was outsourced so they only really acted as assembly. The judges do take into consideration whether you make it or not. We very much make everything. Sadly the carbon tub never made it a few season back because they ran out of carbon fibre Next year should be fun though. The whole dynamic of the competion is changing significantly now as it's getting more press and bigger companies are getting involved. We've been caught with our pants down a bit and we need to try and get a big title sponsor on board. No idea who, but we're going to try. Next years car should have some good innovations on too. I'll be doing one

Full results can be found here: http://www.imeche.org.uk/formu ... ults%20Overall%20Only.xls

Quote from ArosaMike :

Sadly some of them aren't the best and are a bit blurred but it seems I got a few of your car Looked good, although you also didn't finish the endurance if I remember right What happened with your sponsor? Were they gonna make your bodywork for you?

Wow, thanks alot for these nice pics. The endurance wasn't really good for us, me wasn't fast enough and in lap 11, three of our four ignition coils burnt through. Yeah, our sponsor failed to mill our tool to laminate the bodywork. So we build one on our own, in the last two days.

But the car itself went very well, like i said, 5th in the autocross without ever driving the car before on a autocross track is not the poorliest finish we could think of

Greets,
Warper

Sounds promising then! You got much planned for next year? :P I'll be taking a more active roll cause I'll be 3rd year next year and I have a few ideas I want to test on the older cars. We're only an hour away from Brunty, so it's quite easy for us to go and test providing we have the time!

We made our bodywork on our own too. Myself and another guy spent a couple of weeks learning how to beat ally panels to make the moulds for the fiberglass. We've learnt a lot and should be able to make some pretty sexy stuff next year. The sidepods were finished an hour before the team left though :P We're not very good at getting things done early!

looks like a great event, withy great pics too!

which track was the event taking place at? looks like donnington???