NewsletterJuly 2014silverstone

TBR14: uk’s fastest car

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NewsletterSILVERSTONE 2014: THURSDAY/FRIDAY

TEAM BATH RACES THROUGH STATIC EVENTS 95 student race teams from 38 countries met at Silverstone, the week after the British GP, to show-case their latest prototype racecars, designed and built from scratch in 12 months. The rules of the competition are extremely open, to encourage inno-vation and creativity. This is some-thing that students at the University of Bath have taken to the extreme this year. Producing a lightweight carbon fibre chassis coupled to an Aprilia 550cc V-Twin engine, they have created a car with the same power to weight ratio as an F3 car.The result after 4 days of hard fought competition was Bath’s best result for 5 years including a high-light of finishing 4th place in the main endurance race, chasing home the world #1, world #2 and a German team with a є1.3million custom Mercedes engine. To start the event the car must be

qualified as safe and within the regulations, therefore first the car is put through a thorough inspection, called scrutineering. Here the safety features of the car – brakes, steering, suspen-sion, impact absorbent struc-ture, fuel tanks and seat belts – are checked against the 163 page rule book. Passing safety scrutineering quickly and trouble free early in the weekend, was a key factor in TBR’s event running smoothly. This is testament to the build quality and attention to detail paid during the 12 months building up to the event. After this the team competed in the static events, which are designed to assess students engineering, cost and business decisions throughout the project to demonstrate that the car they have produced is the best compromise between conflicting requirements and resources.

These are assessed by industry experts, often alumni of Formula Student, who want to contribute to this tremendous learning exercise. Often they are on the lookout for new recruits for their companies too. Against 95 competitors, Bath scored an impressive haul of points, from 4th place in cost analysis, 7th place in engineering design, and 6th place in the Dragon’s Den busi-ness presentation.

Written by Tom Stevens

Photo Credit to Will Ramsay

PROUD TBR14MEMBERS

July 2014

SILVERSTONE 2014: THURSDAY/FRIDAYTBR15 ON COURSE FOR FUTURE SUCCESSThe car you see in the photos of this newsletter is the Class 1 entry, for complete cars which compete on track for overall honours. The IMechE also runs an event called Class 2 for ‘next year’s teams’ to demonstrate their designs in a paper based competition to best prepare for FS2015. It involves the design, cost and business presenta-tions and is an excellent indicator of potential for future years. An ambitious and advanced design from TBR15 meant the team were confident of an impressive result against the 21 other high calibre teams competing. A strong finish of 4th place in the design presentation event was awarded. The concept presented was a switch to a single cylinder engine with a turbocharger running on ethanol fuel coupled to an all composite chassis. In the Business presentation, deliv-ered by Toby Davies and Jack

Carroll, a business idea centralized on expansion to Europe was rewarded with 2nd place, with judges feedback indi-cating that it was on par with 1st place in all but one small area. This bodes well for an excellent result in the 2015 competition. The final Class 2 event was the Cost and Sustainability presentation, where TBR15 needed just 10 points more than the University of Eind-hoven to clinch the title of overall winner. Presented by Tom Peir-son-Smith and Ryan Marsh, and including a cost report by Peter Alton, the judges were extremely impressed with the work of TBR15, giving us 1st place for the event! Once all the scores were summated, the team finished a very creditable

second overall, just 0.7 points out of 350 from victory. The team returned to the University with silverware for winning the costing event, along with some extremely positive feedback from the judges. TBR15 is now planning some final design improvements to ensure a successful trip to Silver-stone, for Class 1 in 2015.

Written by Tom Peirson-Smith

TBR15 WIN COSTING

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Newsletter

4th

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Costing4th

business6th

design 7th

acceleration8th

skid pad9th

7th Overall

tbr14 PUSHEDTO THE LIMITS

POST RACE INTERVIEW

tbr PIT75/100 pts

65.1/75 pts

135/150 pts

35.6/50 pts

37.6/75 pts

July 2014

FINAL endurance time

SKID-PAD PREPERATION

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7th Overall

endurance4th

autocross12th

efficiency11th

235.9/300 pts

63.7/100 pts

84.4/150 pts

NewsletterSILVERSTONE 2014: SATURDAY/SUNDAY

THE POWER OF RELIABILITY

MORE TO COME AFTER ENCOURAGING DYNAMIC EVENTSTBR competed in three dynamic events on Saturday: ‘Acceleration’ – a 75m drag race, ‘Skid Pad’ – a 15m diameter figure of 8 to assess steady state handling, and ‘Auto-cross’ - a 1km qualifying lap on a coned out circuit on the Silverstone track. A minimum of 4 drivers are required to compete across the weekend to demonstrate the cars adjustable ergonomic controls. Josh Wesley and Adam Phelps

were the drivers selected for the morning’s acceleration and skid pad events, both having racing experience with go karts and hill climb cars respectively. Adam scored TBR’s most competi-tive acceleration time of 4.166s, beating many powerful 4 cylinder cars to secure 8th. The main com-petition came from the 4WD elec-tric cars, who can benefit from turn-ing up their power, to the max permitted of 85KW, for a 3.5s short

burst; something their batter-ies can’t sustain for the longer track events. The skid pad event followed and Bath again achieved a top ten finish. A 5.134s aver-age time to compete the 15m diameter circles was reward-ed with 9th place, just 0.3 secs

off the winner, Monash University. Josh Wesley demonstrated the

cars potential with a 4.977s time which would have put Bath 5th, however clipping a cone incurred a small penalty. This bodes well for future events in Germany and Austria where TBR can unlock the true pace of the car. The 169.5kg car from Bath was performing well, as TBR prepared for the afternoon Auto-cross event.Here Alex Summers and Dave Turton (both experienced TBR driv-ers) took it in turns to set fastest laps on the 1km dry circuit. The overall best time was good enough for 13th place, which although below our expectations, qualified Bath for the afternoon session of endurance race on Sunday, enough to put us out of reach of the rain showers predicted for the morning.

Written by Rob Ashburner

After four days of blistering sunshine at Silverstone, Sunday began with an overcast sky. Work began early, with final checks and set up changes to be completed. Following driver feedback com-bined with data analysis from the sprint event it became apparent that TBR14 required some tinkering to inspire the drivers with the confi-dence to push to the limit. Under-steer on corner entry and a soft ride appeared to be limiting their ability to drive the car on the front axle. Following this, the damper rates were increased and rear anti roll bar stiffened. The main endurance race involves a 22km timed run, with a pit stop and driver change at the mid point. Bath deployed their team of elite

drivers with Alex Summers lead-ing the first stint and claiming

the fastest lap of 1:04. At the mid way point, Dave Turton, took over and continued the good run to bring the car home safely despite losing the front brake circuit due to a fault. At this finish point, Bath had set the fastest time for this event. It is important to take note here, that finishing the main race is an achievement in itself. Last year 38 out of 56 starters did not achieve this. Credit must be given to the technical design team of TBR for designing and executing a quick yet relia-ble challenger. Having achieved this as second nature, we now looked to see how our outright speed faired against our competi-tors. Later in the day some strong competitors from

Germany and Australia did run quicker (world #1 and #2) , stealing the podium position from Bath however with a new team and a new car, 4th place is a very credible finish. Bath also scored the highest points in the fuel efficiency event for any petrol powered car, show-ing how we have balanced perfor-mance with road car relevant chal-lenges of fuel economy.

Written by Ryan Marsh

MONASH’S NOVELDRS SYSTEM

TBR14 PREPARESTO HEAD OUT

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July 2014SILVERSTONE 2014: SATURDAY/SUNDAY

PROJECT MANAGER LEADING BY EXAMPLEThe outstanding personal contribution made by Team Leader, Dave Turton, to the TBR14 campaign, was recog-nised by the IMechE when he was awarded the Craig Dawson Most Valuable Team Member Award at the Formula Student UK awards ceremony, out of 3000 students.This award, in memory of Craig, is made to a member of a team who has gone far beyond the

call of duty and contributed most to driving their team forward.Everyone at Team Bath Racing was delighted that Dave's huge efforts across all areas of the team's operations were recog-nised and acknowledged by this very prestigious award. It would be hard to imagine a more worthy recipient in any team.

Written by Dr Kevin Robinson

TBR14: STILL THE FASTEST, STILL THE BESTAfter another successful year at Formula Student Silverstone, TBR14 was able to claim the title for the best performing UK car at the event. With an overall ranking of 7th at the competition, the car scored more Dynamic Event points than any other UK team, including close rivals Oxford Brookes and the University of Hertfordshire. Despite not winning any of the Dynamic Events outright, a high level of driv-ability coupled with a increased level of reliability, meant that Team Bath Racing was consistently in and around the top 10 for the Dynamic

events. The particular highlight of the weekend was a very strong 4th place in the endurance event, as well as being the 3rd fastest com-bustion car in a straight line. All of these great results combined meant TBR14 finished with 457.2/675 points for the dynamic events, more than any other UK team. The car even outscored last years winner ETH Zurich during the endurance event, as well as beating Monash in the straight line acceleration.With the UK event now in the past,

Team Bath Racing is preparing to take the car to Germany, to further improve on this result. With the valua-ble lessons learnt from the weekend at Silver-stone, including the optimum way to setup the car and what the static event judges are looking for in order to

award maximum points, Team Bath Racing firmly believes that the Class 1 Team and their car are capable of achieving the highest accolades at the next event. The team is target-ing to remain the UK’s fastest team, as well being the overall top UK Team, and finishing the weekend in the top 5. The team now look forward to the German and Austrian competitions where members from the 2015 team will be shadowing the current team at all events to further their experience for next year. Team Bath Racing would like to thank all their sponsors past, present and future. We hope you enjoy sharing the journey (and silverware) with us!

Written by Tom Stevens

DAVE COLLECTS HIS AWARD

TBR14 FINISHING CONSISTENTLYPhoto Credit to

Gardner Photography

skid padAcceleration

autocross

endurance

efficiency

Newsletter July 2014

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