Time to compete!

Hey everyone!

So yesterday marked the first "official" day of competition. The team competed in 4 events... 3 of them were static, and the other was dynamic. Static events test our engineering and business mindsets. (The car is not racing for them.) And the dynamic events are pushing the car to the limits in different areas. I will give you a quick breakdown of our finishes and then go into more detail if you have time to read...

Design - 33rd
Cost - 14th
Marketing Presentation - 28th
Skid-Pad - 18th

Team Photo FSG 2011

I actually competed in all the static events yesterday so I'll try to give you the best personal recap of them. First we headed to our Design event where about 6-8 engineers from Germany go over our car with a fine tooth comb. This event lasts 1-hour and is worth 150 points. The judges ask each engineer on our team questions like:  A.) Why do you run these Goodyear tires instead of Hoosiers? B.) Show me calculations of your suspension system. C.) Explain your choice of engine.... Etc. The questions get harder as the time goes on. I was incharge of the Brake Design system and Driver Ergonomics. A couple questions I was asked were: 1.) What adjustments do you offer in your cockpit (Pedals, seat, brake bias). 2.) Why did you choose this rotor material? Overall the event went well, but we are a young team and our knowledge is still growing. We placed 33rd in this event out of 73.

5 Akron Engineers - 7 German Design Judges

Preparing For Design

Our second event was the Cost event. For this event we construct a 200 page excel document which is used to calculate the cost of every component. From the Shocks all the way to the smallest zip tie. I have actually competed in this event since I was a freshman. (hence why I am bald now...) This was our best static event, we placed 14th out of 75.

Lastly we competed in the presentation event. This event is actually really fun. Maddy & and I provide a 10 minute mock marketing presentation for our car. The overall goal is to market the car & produce ~1000 per year. We calculated all the production costs, return on investments, etc. We were hoping to do a lot better in this event, but we ran in to a few problems. One particularly was our "slide-clicker" stopped working before our presentation : ( Overall we were ranked 28th.

Finally we competed in the Skid-Pad event for the first dynamic event. Logan and Kevin drove this. It tests the cars steady-state turning capabilities. They are both young drivers, but are proving to become comfortable in the car! The placed 18th in this event, which was really good!

RIT running Skid-Pad in the "WET"

This afternoon we competed in Autocross, but ran into problems. I will explain more in tomorrow's post when all events are completed and scored.

Have a great night!