The results of Formula Student UK are in and we placed 56th overall, with 0 dynamic points.

A few years ago we might have been happy with this result, but given how things went in Michigan this year, we are disappointed.

If they awarded points for engine swaps, we’d have won that event. We broke one engine while trying to comply with noise regulations (despite meeting them in the US) and we severely damaged our second engine when the shaft of the oil pump failed and the engine ran without oil. We removed and replaced our engine twice in the span of 24 hours.

We missed three of the four dynamic events while repairing, and we got 100 ft into the endurance event when our spare engine (dubbed “engine 2.5”) failed and left pieces of a piston connecting rod all over Silverstone’s Copse Corner.

It was a frustrating weekend, and we are confident that had these two unrelated major mechanical failures not occurred, we would have completed every event and would likely have placed in the 30s or 20s.

The bright side to all of this, however, is that we gained an immense amount of knowledge. The weekend demonstrated how important it is to consider engine removal when designing a car. Every fastener we unscrewed and screwed and unscrewed again was a reminder of how crucial it is to limit the number of fasteners we use. We learned much more about our engines (which were the victims of our mechanical issues, not the cause). These are lessons that are only truly learned through experience. As much as we would have liked to finish higher, in a way, the weekend we had was much more valuable for the team in the long term. Had we finished around 25th, we wouldn’t have learned a fraction of what we learned by spending the weekend in the garage. At a fundamental level, that’s what these competitions are all about.

However, we hope never to repeat this. These competitions are also about racing, and we didn’t get to do much of that.

We had a valuable weekend, if not a valued weekend.

We enjoyed meeting other teams and seeing other cars we would never see in North America. It was encouraging having so many different teams stop by to take photos of our rear anti-roll bar. It was great to be at Silverstone, a circuit with incredible heritage in the world of motorsports. We hope to be back.

Thank you to all the teams who helped us out and gave us their moral and technical support, and thank you to Dalhousie University and all of our sponsors who support us on this amazing journey of motorsports.

See more updates on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/DalhousieFormulaSAE

The team had a good showing at the final regional autocross event of the year run by Atlantic Region Motor Sports. The event was held at Atlantic Motorsport Park (AMP) in Shubenacadie. It was an extremely wide open track compared to what we are used to driving on so we were able to drive the car faster than ever before. The event was divided up into two run groups and we had the fastest lap time of everyone in the first group with 3 or 4 cars beating our time in the second run group. The car ran reliably all day and was a blast to drive! Thank you to everyone involved with organization, registration, timing and all other volunteers! Official times will be posted soon, in the mean time here are some videos and pictures!

The team placed 9th out of 22 teams from Canada and the US at the 2011 U of T shootout autocross competition last weekend finishing above Rutgers, Cornell, McGill, and Waterloo. A handful of team members travelled to compete in the all day competition Saturday Oct. 1st just outside of Toronto at Mosport race track. The car was unloaded at 7am and quickly passed through registration and tech inspection. The rest of the day from 9am to 4pm was spent with 4 team members taking turns racing the car against the clock. The car performed well all day and we put down some pretty fast laps. We had a great time and were able to promote our team, our sponsors and our school at the same time. Thanks to U of T Racing for all the organizing and big thanks to Albert Murphy for trailering the car all 3600km for us! See below for official results, video and pictures!

RESULTS