Is anyone going to Formula Student in Silverstone this year? We will (Lions Racing Team, Technical University of Braunschweig, Car no. 61)! Our car is already on its way along with 4 team mates. All the rest of the team is going to take the plane from Hamburg to Luton tomorrow evening.

The car had been finished this morning, 2 hours later then the planned departure of our team-vans Why? Just because we damaged our engine at the final test on saturday and needed the whole sunday to find the problem and in the end change the engine. Ok, why did we still tested on saturday? Mh, maybe because we had to do a full repair the whole week, because we totalled our car one week ago while testing. We crashed with 65kph into a drain (Fotos: http://fsae.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/125607348/m/75110646541).

Here is a small video from our last test: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJyrEJzhOBw!

Hope to see some of you on side!

Greets,
Steffen

BTW: Of course we will also take part in Hockenheim, Formula Student Germany 2008!

That sounds really sweet. Whats the engine? Also what did you have to do? design it completely from scratch at uni? good luck anyway

Exactly - developement/design; building from scratch; drive it; fix it; and argueing for it at the competition (Costs, design, business case).

BTW: The engine is a suzuki GSX-R 600 K4 engine.

wow that engine sounds really sweet.
but i thought Honda engines are better than Suzuki engines?

Quote from NSX_FReeDoM :

but i thought Honda engines are better than Suzuki engines?

Sounds like a massive generalisation to me.

Epic sound from that engine.

Quote from Bob Smith :

Sounds like a massive generalisation to me.

Since we had a Honda CBR600 engine in our first car 2002 and afterwards switched to Suzuki, it can't be that bad

So, no one here is going. Its more likely that all the people who going to take part are already there... My flight is scheduled for todays evening... but the whole team is already there.

Here is another video which is about 1 month old, from our anti-lock-brake-system application.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6x32gMtoi0

Too bad about the crash, but something caught my eye. Cane Creek Double Barrles all around?

(Yes, i'm a mountainbiker.)

I'm frighting for FSAE 2009 now...

Quote from Warper :

Here is another video which is about 1 month old, from our anti-lock-brake-system application.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6x32gMtoi0

Wow that looks like a lot of fun Nice video. Hope you have fun on your trip!

It's been absolutely ages since I've been on here, but I was reminded about this place after talking to one of the Lions Racing guys who turned out to be Warper :P (Hi btw!)

Lions had a really unlucky fire during their driver change which thankfull didn't damage the car or Christopher who was in it at the time (apart from breathing in a lung full of extinguisher powder) but did mean they got pulled. The marshalls were being super vidgilent checking for fluids, and after months of issues sealing our diff, we were pleased to find it lasted the distance whithout loosing any oil.

We had pretty much our best result ever considering the strength of competition in the last few years with 11th overall. The team had an 8th back in 2003 but that was without an endurance finish, something which would relegate a team to the mid 20s these days! We haven't finished endurance for 5 years now and it was for this reason that myself and my team mate took it fairly easy and were 12th fastest which to be honest, actually surprised us considering it was purely our aim to finish within the 133%. We also won the Honda R&D Most Desirable Engineering Product award which came as a big surprise, but a great honour. It also meant we went on a tour of the Honda F1 facility in Brackley with Lions who won the most professional team award also from Honda.

Anyway. We have some work to do on the car before Germany. Since we know we can make it now, we're going to work extremely hard on setup and will be going for top 5 in sprint (we were 6th last year in Hockenheim) and top 10 in the endurance. The car is a bit oversteery on the exit at the moment (brilliant for drifiting....I shall post the vid on YouTube of my sprint run :P) and the TC needs a bit more work.


Me negotiating the final corner of the sprint


Doing the driver change. Fastening a single seater harness whilst still wearing your gloves doesn't work!


Crossing the start finish line

Again congratulations to you and your team Mike for finishing the endurance and the overall result. Jeah, we had a lot of badluck but nonetheless I got 6th in sprint with my warmup lap None of the other laps were competitive... because of several problems. Fuel, weather and so on...

But even if we don't finished the endurance, we are very proud of the speed we achieved in the endurance. At least second best lap time, just a bit off the very fast Stuttgart guys.

But, we will see what will happend in Hockenheim at the Formula Student Germany. See you on track Mike.

Greetings,
Steffen

What circuit did you run? National?

Coned off parts of Brooklands, Luffield and Woodcote. See here for the bit used: http://www.formulastudent.com/ ... A77E/0/FS2008SitePlan.pdf

That doesn't show the slaloms and gates though. It was a lot more open than last years track. Quite good fun in places actually!

Ok... now its time to ask who will take part at the Formula Student Germany next weekend at the Hockenheim Circuit?

Steffen

So, how does the MRT in LFS compare to brand new FS cars? No ABS or traction control, but does it feel similar?

Bit of a late update from me but I've been having fun traveling around Germany after the competition. Munich beer is just too damn good! LOL

To answer the question about an actual FSAE car compared to the MRT5:

In some ways similar, but also not. I can only obviously comment on my teams car because I haven't driven any of the others. The main similarities is the acceleration and gearing. 99% of all the cars have similarly short gearing. The main differences are grip and turn in. The MRT seems to understeer horribly and feels very low on grip. The real cars are in fact the opposite really. They're very positive on turn in and we were pulling 1.6G in the corners despite not having the best tyres (we're still developing them with Dunlop). I believe Warpers team, Lions, pulled 1.7Gs last year at Silverstone. No idea what their data says this year, but I would guess it's similar. Our car had issues with exit oversteer which was a bit interesting at times!

You'll get a decent idea of how they handle by watching the recorded coverage from Germany.

http://www.formulastudent.tv/play.php?vid=313
This is me driving in the sprint (fast forward to half way through....we're number 11 in the blue, white and red). We weren't super fast unfortunately, loosing out in the second sector.

http://www.formulastudent.tv/play.php?vid=336
Half way through again for Warper and his Team Mates awesome runs. Very well sorted car!

What a shame that they did only show my fault lap, not my pole lap :P Thanks for sharing Mike... so your trip through Germany was good at all? i hope not only the munich beer...

Greetings from Panama...
Steffen

Some pictures of our team/car at the Formula Student Germany:


Me in the car just before the autocross run


Me, Tobias, our electrics and electronics guy and christopher, second endurance driver and responsible for the suspension after we had successfully finished the endurance event


The LR08 in action with christopher driving one of his autocross laps (Sorry for the picture size )

Although it was tempting to stay in the beer halls, we did go elsewhere! Berlin was brilliant and will have to return next year I think. We're also going to go to Munich for Oktoberfest.

Went to Autostadt in Wolfsburg too. I went when I was younger, but I don't think I noticed quite how many VAG cars there were on the roads of the town! A little bit scary in some ways...a bit like VW have been brainwashing the population. LOL Couldn't help but wave when I drove past the exit to Braunschweig too. Shame you'd already escaped to Panama. Hope you're having fun there and haven't been car jacked or anything yet!