Formula North 2014
May 25, 2014
Following our success in Formula SAE Michigan, we leave on high spirits for Formula North. Formula North is smaller than the event in Michigan, with only 20 teams attending, but Carleton has attended since its inception in 2012, and it’s on our home soil. The car and truck have spent the last few days since Formula SAE Michigan in Cambridge, a halfway point in our journey, and soon they arrive at the Molson Centre in Barrie, ready to tear up the track again.
You can clearly see the range of emotion and preparedness amongst us; Omar is standing at attention, Frank is keeping warm, Martin is prepared for fire for some reason, Mark is looking anxious, and Omar, is possibly asleep behind the shades.
Our first day is full of the usual fun. We complete our driver gear inspection without a fuss, and we are the first team through technical inspection and out onto the track. Again we get through the tilt test and brake without a problem and just squeeze by the noise limit.
We have a bit of a scare during our fuel fill up, as the marshal spills the jug of 94 octane fuel. The right side of our engine bay was soaked in fuel, including our entire engine management system, fuse box, and relays. A quick bit of time later, the fuel had dried and we timidly started the car, fire extingushers at the ready. Without a problem the car fired up and we hit the test track for some much needed driving.
Our first day ends with us tightening the chain from the engine. We think that our diff mount keeps slipping, so we have been forced to tighten the chain throughout our competition time in Michigan, and throughout our coming week at Formula North. This would soon prove to be a symptom of a bigger problem, but more on that to come.
Our second day starts with a fair share of waiting. Many other teams are still working their way through static and dynamic technical inspections. We enjoy some quality time with a healthy supply of timbits. We were happy to share the bounty with our fellow teams, and USF was more than happy to take up our offer.
The second day at Formula North is also the time to get all the nitty gritty competition bits out of the way; Marketing, Cost, and Design events all take place throughout the day.
We face the judges with smiles on our faces for the Design event and as their questions wind to an end the conversation began to switch to more casual topics. What cars we drive or dream of, and little tid-bits about how they’ve done things in industry that we might not have thought of. We placed 6th out of 20 teams, which is a great result.
Formula North has a much more casual feel than many other events. This is likely due to the fact that is is not yet run by the Society of Automotive Engineers, and is not an Official Formula SAE event….. yet. We definitely enjoy this aspect, and getting some time to talk to the judges was both valuable from a learning perspective and rewarding personally, it’s nice to know that people do care about the work we’ve put into the RR14 over the last year.
Our second day ends with a bit of fun. Some of the volunteers that organize Formula North and judge the cars are Ravens Racing Alumni, so we head out to Lone Star and decide to share dinner. In the parking lot is an interesting machine…. A Yamaha WR 250R, the exact bike we have borrowed a motor from the our racecars for the past three seasons. It was cool to see a complete bike and motor.
We are a big hapy group of people, and again…. We fill a bunch of tables.
Our third day at Formula North is filled with our dyanmic events. It’s time for skid-pad, and acceleration. Simlar to our results in Michigan we place 7th out of 20 teams on the skid-pad, and 15th out of 20 teams in straight line acceleration.
Following our runs on the skid-pad and acceleration course we stopped to tighten our chain again. At this point we know that something must be wrong with our chain or differential mounts. This is the most we’ve ever seen the chain move around and we know that we need to make improvements to the car next year.
Our last day at Formula North is where the most points in the competition are won or lost. In the morning we run the autocross course, and the afternoon is dominated by the endurance and fuel efficiency events. We place 14th in autocross, and again…. Our chain gets looser.
Finally, our last competition level endurance for 2014. We hit the track in good form and soon we’re well on our way to finishing first in fuel efficiency. Within a few laps though it has become apparent that something is wrong with our car. Lots of chain noise coming from the rear, and rough shfits from our first driver Mackenzie are enough to make us nervous, but not enough for the marshals to take us off the course.
At the driver change our second driver Martin jumps in and gets ready to go. Meanwhile Mackenzie updates him on the situation with the car and a scrutineer takes some time to examine the back end of the car to try and find the source of the noise. No issues are apparent to the scrutineer….. or none that he can find, so we head back out onto the course.
As Martin hits the course he goes easy on the throttle, careful not to break the car, but soon the inevitable happens and we break something. Our chain issues had nothing to do with our differential, or chain placement or chain tension. Instead we had slowly broken one of our two motor mounts. By three quarters of the way through our endurance run the engine is clearly bouncing around, Martin eases back and takes the rest of the course carefully, which is a silver lining. We use less fuel, come first in fuel efficiency, and 8th out of 20 teams overall.
We leave Formula North the next day, happy to have completed our competitions with no catastrophic failures. Time to start the long trip home, and the even longer journey of building our new cars for the 2015 season.
