👌🏻I completely agree with Vincenzo here. I believe that a student category should have some sort of restriction to make future engineers think deeply on how to extract performance in several different ways, but is this the correct approach from the organisation? When I attended FS Austria 🇦🇹, it was quite confusing to see electric cars producing even more noise than combustion vehicles (that are very limited on certain parameters by regulations) and that required some sort of limitation. Teams are going to try and use a similar technology due to the ambiguously redacted rules, as we are encouraged to be innovative. However, this lack of precision and inconsistency could lead to awful experiences for the teams... Imagine a team uses their very limited resources on developing a PGE device and tries to comply with the rules, but a judge might decide it is still illegal and completely throw away a year's worth of work and spoil the performance expected while other teams could compete with this sort of PGE... FS Competitions, please, we trust judges and their goodwill, however, this uncertainty needs to be solved, with a more restrictive rule or at least the verification methods judges will use in scrutineering regarding PGE devices 🙏🏻 Formula Student Germany
THE END OF THE POWER GROUND FS ERA? The 1986 World Rally Championship remained in the books as the apogee of the legendary Group B rally cars and his queen the Lancia Delta S4. The 2017 World Endurances Championhip was the highest point of the LMP1-H development, with the Porsche 919 Hybrid The 2024 Formula Student Season will be probably remember for the most powerful unrestricted Active Aerodynamic Devices ever seen in FS. In particular the Skid Pad discipline was dominated by Valerie of TU Graz Racing Team able to win at on home soil at Formula Student Austria, at Formula Student East, Formula Student Alpe Adria and Fomula SAE Italy. In particular in Hungary, with legendary driver Markus Pleschberger behind the wheel the Styrians were able to set the World Record with an incredible 4.135s. Impressive is the active aerodynamic systems of AMZ Racing. In their rule compliant Version of the system, the dufur 2024 was able to win overall at Formula Student Germany, Formula Student East and Formula Student Switzerland, while in the unrestricted version (mythen), they were able to set a Guiness World Record tim a 0.956 s in the 0-100 kmh acceleration. Worth to mention are also the systems of Rennstall Esslingen and, of course, the aerodynamic wizards of UPBracing Team from Padeborn. After the announcement of Formula Student Austria, everyone was expecting a rule to limit the active aerodyamic devices and in the recently pubblished Version 1.0 of the Formula Student Germany rules for the 2025 season following can be read: "T11.11.1 The maximum total power of any active devices designed to move air is 500 W, this does not apply to CV1.8." Of course the rules as it is written seems let some free room for active aero devices as well as possible loopholes. As Sir Lewis Hamilton learnt at 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix "any" does not mean "all". Is the 500 W limit applicable to the power of each device individually? And how to ensure that the device is operated at each stage of the competition under the 500 W limit? The rule seems to let free room for active aerodynamic devices for Combustion Vehicles. Power of Supercharger and Turbocharger is unrescricted. An electric supercharger could be probably used to suck air from the floor of the car, provided that just the rule limited ammount will find its way to the engine. Furthemore the definition of "any active devices designed to move air" is pretty rough. Wings are designed to actively change the direction and velocity of the airflow and they absorbe at peak power significantly more than 500 W. The experience in Motorsport shows that once the engineers tasted the smell of the blood they are relucted to let their prey go. My expectations is that the aero guys, after having understood the potential, will design their system to exploit every possible gray area in the rules. What is your one? https://lnkd.in/dDsQr5_S
You touched a couple of very relevant points: the accuracy of the rules and the homogeneity of the interpretation. Since FS Team achieved such high level of complexity, budget and professionalism, a high level of professionalism is expected also in the scrutineering. I know that this topic is being discussed in the FS World Council. At the moment the only practical possibility to achieve a homogeneus scrutineering is to invite Ricardo Ferreira at each event and let check him all complex issues..