UVic's Race Car Speeds to Best Ever Finish
A race car designed and built by University of Victoria students finished second among the Canadian entries at an international engineering competition earlier this month. Finishing 11th overall out of 63 entrants at the Formula Student competition in Leicester, England was the UVic Formula SAE team’s best result since its start four years ago.
The competition was based on the premise that a manufacturing firm had hired the teams to produce a prototype car for evaluation. The intended sales market was the non-professional weekend autocross or sprint racer. Therefore, the car had to have a very high performance in terms of its acceleration, braking, and handling qualities. The car had to be low in cost, easy to maintain, reliable, aesthetically pleasing, comfortable and use common parts. The prototype vehicle was to cost less than $25,000. The challenge to the team was to design and fabricate a prototype car that best met these objectives. Each design was compared and judged with other competing designs to determine the best overall car.
“What contributed to the team’s placing 11th overall out of 63 was completion of the endurance event — a 22 km test of the car’s performance, reliability and fuel efficiency,” says team member Ian McMurdo. “Typically only one-third of the teams complete the endurance event. That’s because the rules do not allow any adjustments to be made to the car during the event. But, the UVic car completed the test with a flawless driver change after 11 kms and smooth car control from the drivers.”
Among Canadian universities competing in the competition UVic finished second only to the University of Toronto and ahead of the universities of Waterloo, Montreal and Ryerson.
Further information can be found at www.formulastudent.com and www.uvic.fsae.ca.
The competition was based on the premise that a manufacturing firm had hired the teams to produce a prototype car for evaluation. The intended sales market was the non-professional weekend autocross or sprint racer. Therefore, the car had to have a very high performance in terms of its acceleration, braking, and handling qualities. The car had to be low in cost, easy to maintain, reliable, aesthetically pleasing, comfortable and use common parts. The prototype vehicle was to cost less than $25,000. The challenge to the team was to design and fabricate a prototype car that best met these objectives. Each design was compared and judged with other competing designs to determine the best overall car.
“What contributed to the team’s placing 11th overall out of 63 was completion of the endurance event — a 22 km test of the car’s performance, reliability and fuel efficiency,” says team member Ian McMurdo. “Typically only one-third of the teams complete the endurance event. That’s because the rules do not allow any adjustments to be made to the car during the event. But, the UVic car completed the test with a flawless driver change after 11 kms and smooth car control from the drivers.”
Among Canadian universities competing in the competition UVic finished second only to the University of Toronto and ahead of the universities of Waterloo, Montreal and Ryerson.
Further information can be found at www.formulastudent.com and www.uvic.fsae.ca.
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Media contacts
Ian McMurdo (Engineering) at (250) 386-9749 or iandm@uvic.ca
