usm14 season

review newsletter

Formula Student

Germany

/strathformulastudent @usmfstudent /usmformulastudent

University of Strathclyde

Motorsport

Formula Student

UK

SILVERSTONE, UK

At the start of the season, USM14 set itself a range of

ambitious but achievable objectives based on the

evolution of USM 13. With the introduction of an

aerodynamic package, this proved to be the largest

design change that would improve the competitiveness

of the car on track.

Following an extensive pre-competition testing phase,

the team attended the UK Formula Student Competition

held at the Silverstone race track the week after the

British Grand Prix. Every year around 97 teams from over

30 countries from all around the world take part, making

the competition very challenging and prestigious.

Most of the team members arrived early in the

afternoon on Wednesday to attend the opening

ceremony, watch F1 cars testing around the track, set up

the garage and camp site. Some team members took

part in the Bosch Eco Driving challenge where one

member achieved an efficiency of 75 mpg!

The car didn’t arrive at the camp site until well into the

night when there were last minute preparations

required for Scrutineering the next day. Thursday was

spent refining parts of the car and ensuring the

aerodynamic package was appropriately and firmly

assembled for the technical inspection. The night was

spent preparing for the static events the next day:

Design, Cost and Business presentations.

Friday involved the

team taking part in the

static events starting

with the Business

Presentation followed

by the Design event.

The third and last

static event was the

Cost Presentation. While some team members were

doing the static events, others took the car through the

various safety tests required before competing in the

dynamic events. Scrutineering was passed in the

morning followed by Tilt and Noise tests in the

afternoon. With only the Brake test left to do, it was

looking like it was going to be a successful day. However,

the brake pads got covered with grease due to a seal

coming loose resulting in a brake pad change and the

team carrying out the test the next day.

Saturday started by

bedding in the new

brake pads in the

practice area in

preparation for the

brake test. It was

important to pass the final safety test as soon as possible

as in the morning the first two dynamic events were to

be held, Skid Pad and Acceleration. The brake test was

passed around 11 am leaving only one hour to carry out

the Skid Pad and Acceleration event and get significant

points for the team. The skid pad event involves the car

doing a figure of eight as fast as possible. One skid pad

run was done setting a very quick time of 5.13 seconds

which placed the team 8th for the event! This placed us

ahead of some big teams. Being extremely happy with

our first skid pad run, the acceleration event was next

which had to be

done quickly. The

acceleration event

involves covering

75m from rest and a

time is recorded.

USM14 recorded a

time of 4.64 seconds which, although a decent time,

wasn’t as good as expected and placed the team 28th for

the event. During the lunch break before the Autocross

www.usmformulastudent.co.uk 1

25th Overall

1st Cost

8th Skidpad

28th Acceleration

28th Autocross

Endurance DNF

47th Business

21st Design

event, the team found out that we made it in the Cost

event final where the top six teams present to judges

again with more in depth analysis and questioning. This

was the third time in as many years the team reached

this stage.

The afternoon was dominated by the Autocross event

between adjusting the car set-up and running in the

event with two different drivers. The first driver set a

time of 60.5 seconds which placed 28th for the event.

Having set a good time, the second driver had only one

thing in mind- push the car to the limit. However,

not having driven with the aero

package before, braking distances

were underestimated which

resulted in a worse lap time.

Nevertheless USM14 did well in the

event.

Following Autocross, the car was

cleaned up and readied for the

Cost Event final. There we faced

competition from five other top teams:

University of Stuttgart, Zagreb, Lund, Bath

and Cardiff.

Saturday evening was the first award ceremony where

the team was looking forward to our first trophy of the

year. “And the winners of the 2014 Cost Award is a team

from the UK, car number 115, The University of

Strathclyde!”

The team retained the FSUK Cost Award and for three

years in a row the team has won a cost award

either at UK or Germany. Having

ended the day on a high, the team

was looking forward to Sunday, the

final event, Endurance.

After four sunny days, Sunday

started with rain and the sky

wasn’t looking like clearing up

before our run. Fortunately we

were running in the afternoon which

gave us time to decide whether to use dry

or wet tyres. The Endurance event

involves doing twenty laps of the track with

a mandatory driver change half way through. The first

driver started well with slick tyres; the lap times were

improving and the car was looking good. During the

driver change, a marshal saw a small leak at the back of

the car and we were not allowed to restart the engine.

Unfortunately because of a small oil leak we weren’t

able to finish endurance and missed out on a significant

number of points. USM14 finished 25th overall out of 97

teams. With highlights of the competition being the Cost

Award and personal best in the Skidpad Event finishing

higher than other top teams such as Bath, Stuttgart,

Chalmers and Karlshrue. Confident that USM14

underperformed, the team was determined more than

ever to solve the engine issues and finish off the season

with a brilliant performance at the next competition:

Formula Student Germany.

www.usmformulastudent.co.uk 2

HOCKENHEIM, GERMANY

Following the

UK Formula

Student

competition,

USM decided

to use the two

weeks before

traveling to Hockenheim to diagnose the engine and find

out the cause of the leak that stopped USM14 from

finishing endurance. It was found that excessive testing

before the competition resulted in the engine becoming

exhausted and it required a re-build. The spare engine,

“Bumblebee”, was installed on USM14 and the car was

taken for testing before the German Competition.

Following testing to adjust car set-up and ensuring all

the components were reliable, USM14 was ready to go

overseas. Formula Student Germany is the toughest and

most prestigious competition of all the Formula Student

Events.

Part of the team drove to Germany and arrived on

Tuesday to register and set up the garage while the rest

flew over. From the start of the competition it was a

completely different story to the British event. The team

was far more relaxed and it felt like all was going

smoothly. USM14 passed Scrutineering and all the safety

tests on the first day, Wednesday, becoming the fourth

fastest team to do so- a great achievement!

What a difference from two weeks ago when the whole

process was rushed. This meant that USM had most of

Wednesday and all of Thursday to do test runs. Having

passed all the safety tests early meant that the team

could focus on static events: Design, Cost and Business

presentations.

Thursday flew by between testing, finalising the car set-

up and preparing for the presentations the next day.

Friday came and the team was very much looking

forward to showing what exactly the team had been

working on for the past year, especially building on our

recent success and win of the Cost award at the UK

competition. First was the Business presentation, a

Dragon Den style presentation where the Formula

Student team acts as if it was a business looking for an

investment. At UK the team underperformed in this

event and there was a lot of room for improvement. Two

team members had the privilege of presenting to judges

in the famous Mercedes Tower at the centre of the

Hockenheim F1 track. Although improved from UK, USM

still came a disappointing 32nd place. Following was the

Design Event where

the team presented

the design of the

car by justifying

design decisions

and showing how

the various car sub

systems integrate together. The team achieved a poor

result of 40th place. This was due to the Judges failing to

see that as it was our first year of making an

Aerodynamic package, the car was designed without

considering its implications and the package was

adapted to the car instead of building around it.

www.usmformulastudent.co.uk 3

15th Overall

Best UK Team

15th Cost

17th Skidpad

15th Endurance

24th Autocross

41st Acceleration

32nd Business

40th Design

Finally, the Cost event with a special case presentation

was carried out. Out of all the static events, this was the

teams best performance- 15th place. While the team was

pondering about the disappointing static results, the

time came for the dynamic events. The USM team got

together and decided to move on encouraged by a well-

rounded, high performance car brought to the

competition.

Start of the

Dynamic

events and

USM14

started

with a strong performance in the

wet Skid Pad Event achieving 17th

place ahead of some big teams.

41st in Acceleration was the

result of too much wheel slip.

The car was set-up for a track

with more grip than the track where

the event was carried out. Adding the

increased drag from the Aerodynamic

package, it resulted in poorer performance

when compared to past years.

In the Autocross event USM14 placed 24th. It was a good

result that ensured during the Endurance event the team

would be running in the afternoon with other top teams.

It is a tradition at FS Germany to reward teams for doing

something out of the normal, something different and

this year USM won an award for the best “Design

Priorities” and most creative use of hashtags:

“#MayTheDownforceBeWithYou” and

“#BigIsAlwaysBetter”.

With FS UK Endurance memories still fresh in mind, the

team was very much looking forward to redeeming itself

and performing well in the Endurance event. USM14

started the Endurance strongly, overtaking a number of

cars in the early laps and putting in good lap times and

then came the time to change driver. Driver change

was carried out and the new driver tried to start

the engine a few times with no

success…and then it started! What a

relief it was. The second driver

went out and started setting even

faster lap times with the car

lifting on two wheels a number

of times showing just how hard

the driver was pushing the car.

18 laps passed and USM14

completed Endurance! Only a few teams

(27 out of 78) managed to complete

Endurance showing how big an

achievement it was for the team to finish 15th.

It was a brilliant end to the USM14 season with the team

achieving its best finish ever at Formula Student

Germany and finishing as the top team from the UK!

www.usmformulastudent.co.uk 4

USM 15, 15 YEARS OF INNOVATION & ACHIEVEMENT

With another successful season completed, it was time

to say goodbye to USM14 and all the valued team

members that have contributed so much to the

development of the University of Strathclyde Motorsport

Team.

All team members have gone above and beyond what is

required from them and delivered such a high

performance machine that competed with the very best

Universities and cars from around the world and

performed extremely well. It is worth remembering that

USM is a fully student run team and an extra-curricular

activity for which students receive no academic credit.

All the students are there because they share one

common passion, Motorsport. It is worth giving a big

thanks to all our sponsors who help us throughout the

year without whom this project would not be possible.

Their help is extremely valuable and highly appreciated,

it is with thanks to them and the University of

Strathclyde that we learn so much from designing and

building a single seat racing car which truly shapes the

engineers of the future by best preparing them to go on

and be successful in their engineering careers.

It is now time to look at the future, USM 15. This will be

a car like no other, the best one yet. Building on USM’s

long history, USM 15 will be the 15th car, empowering 15

years of development and experience, a special year

with lots of success to look forward to.

As per every year, the team is currently in the process of

organising the various sub teams and finalising design

and management plans. With big rule changes affecting

the design of next year’s car, careful design and high

innovation as well as creativity will be essential to

produce a high performance car. Just to give a flavour of

the challenges that the team will face, plans are to re-

design the front suspension set-up and lower the front

of the chassis. This is to fit better with Aerodynamic

rules changes which significantly reduce the front and

rear wing sizes. This opens up opportunities to develop

an undertray and diffuser as well as more auxiliary

aerodynamic components. It will be vital this season to

ensure all systems integrate well with each other with

the focus being the validation of designs and the

production of a high performance yet cost effective

formula student racing car.

The 2014/15 season is underway and it will be the

continuous support from all of our sponsors that will

ensure we deliver another great car that not only the

team and university, but also all our supporters can be

proud of.

USM looks forward to working with our sponsors,

building on our successes and producing a high calibre

competitive car.

www.usmformulastudent.co.uk 5

www.usmformulastudent.co.uk