Having our design award and overall 2nd place on FSUK still fresh in our minds, we are currently busy preparing for the next event: FSG at the Hockenheim F1 circuit in Germany. The test team is testing and improving the DUT09 and its drivers. The operations department is planning the trip and arranging everything else necessary for another nice event. The chiefs and engineers are preparing for the static events and several other team members are packing the truck and the machinery.

Thanks to the promising results in England and with a car in perfect shape, we are very confident about our participation in Germany next week. Placed third on the updated world ranking by fs-world.org, just behind the universities of Stuttgart and Western Australia (who are both present on FSG as well), we will have a tough job defending our first place from last year. But, of course, we will do everything we can to beat all the other 75 teams competing.

Formula Student Germany will take place from august 5 th to 9 th at the Hockenheim Formula 1 circuit in Germany. To stay up-to-date you can visit this site or subscribe to the daily newsletter.

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We are home from Silverstone for a week now, and the preparations for FSG (the event in Hockenheim, Germany from the 6th untill the 9th August) are started already, nevertheless we made a movie of the final day at Silverstone. You can see it below:

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We’ve just returned from our Award Ceremony and to our lovely surprise we returned with five awards! First of all we’ve won the Class 1 design winner award for best Engineering Design (FISITA Award for Engineering Excellence) and the accompanying memorial award. This memorial award was first introduced in 2003 and our predecessors won it immediately and after six years this baby is finally home again. This price is awarded to us because of our lightweight, ergonomic and reliable designed racecar.

The third award is an obvious result of the above, the Airbus Lightweight Award for the lightest car which finished the Endurance race. Then to our surprise we’ve won the overall Statics award for all our Business, Costs and Design presentations, the best of all the teams!

But the most important award was the second place overall, with just 5 points of the 800 behind the number 1 of the world we were very close in beating our biggest rival: Stuttgart.

We are very happy with our results and we wouldn’t have won without all the help outside our team. Therefore I would like to thank all our sponsors, friends, family and Wim Thijs for their amazing support and effort! Three years in a row second at Silverstone, is really unbelievable considering the size of the competition and its prestige, what a success…

Just in three weeks: FS Germany, all the biggest players in the world will be there! Now we know for sure we can win! But first a beer, or two.

Stef de Jong,
Team Manager

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After two days of strange looks, some members of other teams got the guts to join our morning gymnastics session. With about 10 extra participants we had a very positive start of the first dynamics day. Today started with the acceleration and skidpad events. Our first two drivers would do both events, starting with the skidpad. Up next was the acceleration and after noon the sprint/autocross started. Considering the very fast time of Stuttgart, we knew it would be very difficult to beat them. Our first Erik had to set a decent time, not taking too much risks. This resulted in the 7th time. Our second Erik had to set an even better time. Sadly, he missed a corner and hit some cones. With a final 6th place we were a little disappointed. This disappointment was compensated by our selection into the design finals. Just after the panoramic picture, our chiefs went to the design finals and as we know, did a very good job. Today is the last day of the event where the Endurance race was driven. We finished the race in a good time, so it seems we did well here. We still have to wait for the final overall result which will be announced tonight.

We placed a few of our pictures at the website as well, they can be found here: FSUK 2009 photos

Here you can see a self-made movie of day 5:

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It’s 7 o’clock and again the whole team stands in front of our bus for the second session of morning gymnastics this week. Today we will have to finish the last part of scrutineering, the brake test. But, as today is statics day, we will have to attend the cost, design and business judging. Together with all the team members and the car we started with the cost judging and we have the impression we did quite well. After that we moved on to the design judging, and finally, Stef gave his business presentation before several judges. Considering the responses of the judges, we guess we did a good job on statics today. The only disappointment was the cancellation of the soccer competition organized by our event crew. The cause is not hard to guess, rain, rain and some more rain.

Here you can see a self-made movie of day 4:

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Today we started with our notorious morning gymnastics session. Not bothered by the surprised looks of other teams, all teammembers enthusiastically started day three of the FSUK event. Some of our members had to be quick in order to get a good position in the scrutineering row, others could enjoy their free morning. Around 10 o’clock everybody had to gather in order to sign in for the event. After 4 hours of waiting, we could finally start the scrutineering. At six o’clock in the evening, just before the end of the day and whilst the English rain was falling, we completed the noise test and called it a day. Finally we were welcomed by the organization and day three was complete.

Here you can see a self-made movie of day 3:

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Half past 5, day two of FSUK has started. Very few members of other teams are awake when our complete team is having breakfast. With two members celebrating their birthday and after an impressive entrance of the ‘old’ team members the evening before, everybody has a very high motivation, despite the early morning and lack of morning gymnastics. Our first goal of the day is to move everything from our current camp site to the official Formula Student camp site. Because of our truck, which needs a special location, we had to be very early and secure a good spot. After putting up our tents, installing all equipment and while building up our pit, a large part of the team went on a nice trip to the transport museum. And, finally, the team got its all important exercise.

Here you can see a self-made movie of day 1 & 2:

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After an eleven hour trip we arrived at Silverstone for our first event this year. The journey started half past 5 this morning. The first few hours to the ferry at Dunkerque were without any problems thanks to good preparations and even better music. After some relaxation time at the harbor, the ferry departed at 10 o’clock. Thanks to the change in time zone we sailed within one hour to the British coast line. Here we continued towards Silverstone. Despite some trouble finding the correct location of the camp site, we arrived on schedule. As the official camp site is not open until tomorrow we had to set up our base on a neighboring camp site. Tomorrow morning everybody has to wake up early again, to break up and rebuild our headquarters at the right location.

We will keep you posted on our website and the daily newsletter.

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After nine months of designing, producing and testing our racecar is finally race worthy. Just in time, because we are now at the eve of the Formula Student Event on the Silverstone Circuit. Our competition is good, so it won’t be easy this year. But we have confidence that our team can bring our car to her max. Tuesday we will leave, Wednesday we will do the last preparations in England and Thursday our car will be scrutinized by the organization. After scruteneering, there are some judging events on Friday and then Saturday and Sunday we will race.

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If there is anything we from DUT Racing can agree on, it is ‘engineering is fun’ (and that the DUT09 is very cool). And exactly this was part of the central theme of the 37th annual conference of the Société Européenne pour la Formation des Ingénieurs (SEFI). During this 4 day conference in Rotterdam, we were present on behalf of the TU Delft, to show what we do to become better engineers and how much fun engineering actually can be.

The other part of the central theme was ‘attracting young people to engineering’. We as a team know everthing about that. Many interested people were keen to hear our story, to see how we manage to build hightech sustainable racecars and educate young teammembers. Some were amazed to see the technology and materials we apply. But above all, they saw our enthousiasm and dedication to engineering.

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