FORMULA STUDENT
Formula Student 2011
Bespoke ECUs, international collaborations, beam axles and homemade differentials, this year’s events threw up some genuine, and welcome, surprises
BY GEMMA HATTON
Silverstone, with Rennteam Uni Stuttgart taking the overall Class 1 win. On top of that, the team collected five more awards and consistently scored above 70 per cent across the board, with Presentation and Design scoring in the high 90s. Consequently, Stuttgart was
F
a strong contender going into the tough Endurance event, which is renowned for being a car breaker. The amount of full throttle running on the new Silverstone track resulted in a number of engine failures and a staggering 45 per cent of cars not finishing, including several front-running teams such as Global Formula Racing (GFR, a collaborative effort between DHBW Ravensburg, Germany
or the fourth year running, Germany triumphed at in the Formula Student competition, held at
and Beaver Racing from Oregon State, USA), overall event leaders, Bath, and the Oxford Brookes University team. England’s fickle weather played a crucial part in the dynamic events and Stuttgart managed to put in a luckily-timed dry Endurance run, which topped the tables, and the torrential showers that followed meant its rivals
was ‘to put several thoughts on maintainability and accessibility at the rear of the car.’ It decided on a modular concept, with a composite monocoque at the front and a tubular spaceframe at the rear, enabling easy access to the engine components. That saved time in testing, and allowed them instead to concentrate on preparing the car
Weight is a major factor
when designing a successful Formula Student car
John Hilton, chair of Formula Student
could not even come close. In second place was last year’s
winner, TU Munich, while UH Racing (Hertfordshire) scored an impressive third place, making it the top UK team once again. Stuttgart’s design philosophy
58
www.racecar-engineering.com • September 2011
for the competition. Consequently, the team finished the car at the end of April, and went testing ‘twice or three times a week’, as well as taking advantage of a ‘pre-event’, organised by main sponsor, ZF,
where all teams sponsored by the company were able to simulate the Endurance and Sprint events. With electronic systems highly
evident across the 2011 field, Stuttgart claimed to have a basic car, with a philosophy that, ‘if you do too much in electronics, you could get more problems. We do a lot, but only what we need, so there are no special extra features.’ However, the team did later reveal that the car was equipped with a cone light which illuminated when the driver hit a cone and picked up a penalty ‘just so he knows he did something wrong,’ revealed the team. With the weather so changeable at Silverstone, the ever-present debate over aerodynamics continued, with the controversial GFR car dominating the Sprint event and proving to be by far the fastest car in the wet during the Endurance event. The joint team’s design had all
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