Formula Student UK

[ArosaMike]

I'm in my Formula Student team and went along to competion for the endurance day yesterday. As I'm only a 2nd year I haven't had an aweful lot to do with the car and took the option to just observe again this year as I felt I'd just get in the way (as it turned out, there were too many people already!). It also gave me a chance to practice more motorsport photography, and as the barriers and marshalls are fairly relaxed and tend to assume that if you sitting there with a huge lense that you're mature enough not to be an idiot and get too close, it's possible to get into some good positions that would normally be closed off in normal motorsport.

So....I've only had a chance to look at the 300+ photos I took and edit a few, so here they are so far:

This is Helsinki's (Finland) car is sponspored rather obviously by Audi. They probably have one of the biggest budgets and it shows with adjustable traction control, a really excellent turbo, awesome bodywork and a very professional pit area. As you can tell I loved it!











Luleå had this really nicely painted helmet:



And talking of helmets:



Trust the 'crazy' Dutch to have cool air intakes on their car (Eindhoven Uni):



One of the many German teams:



Teams came from as far as Toronto and Delhi:





The Chalmers (Sweden) car was perhaps the fastest there...:



...largely due to this little baby strapped to the top of the engine....a Superchager



What a shame it didn't finish the endurance



This car was perhaps the meanest looking one of the day. It was incredibly quick too until the exhaust fell off it! It sounded great, but sadly got pulled in because of it!



I'll post some more tomorrow Took some good ones of the planes in the background too, but they're for another thread

[AxlxA]

omg.... you are so lucky. You're in a formula school dude?

[ArosaMike]

Yeah....University of Birmingham England. Sadly almost all the experienced guys left last year, and we did rather badly this weekend and came 40th! A bit of a reality check after 22nd last year (which we thought was bad), 13th the year before that, and 7th the year before that! I personally have some good ideas for next year though and will be involved a hell of a lot more and the rest of the team have learnt a lot from this year. It's great fun though....just kind of galling when you see teams like Graz who get 1,000,000 Euros from RedBull a year and have a full carbon tub with a cast rear diff and gearbox!

The guy driving the car this year was also rather rubbish. I thankfully should get my hands on it next year and at least do some of the driving For some reason my karting experience seems to count for little when it comes to driving the thing in their eyes!

[Viper007Bond]

Damn, those are pretty sophisticated.

Are you guys limited to the size of the air intake like we air here? (Or last I looked, we were. I was Baja, not Formula, so...)

Anyway, here's a bunch of pictures from SAE Formula West this year (no I didn't take them): http://groups.engr.oregonstate.edu/S...ry.php?album=4

[mancs]

Nice panning shots! I love #2 the best, nice cropping

[ArosaMike]

Originally Posted by Viper007Bond

Are you guys limited to the size of the air intake like we air here? (Or last I looked, we were. I was Baja, not Formula, so...)

Yup. 19mm restrictor after the throttle and maximum 610cc Theoretical max is about 90bhp, which tbh, when the car weighs 200kg is enough

[ArosaMike]

Originally Posted by mancs

nice cropping

No cropping there Just managed to poke my camera over the fence and get very close!

[mancs]

^Than double my congrats

[ArosaMike]

Right...here are some more Completely forgot I took the first two





Thought I should probably post some of our car









Now just some more randoms













And for good measure....some more Helsinki Poly pictures



This one is cropped mancs LOL

[youngwarrior]

what uni do you go to and whats your course name? Nice pics BTW. That audi sponsored car looks very nice.

[ArosaMike]

Originally Posted by youngwarrior

what uni do you go to and whats your course name? Nice pics BTW. That audi sponsored car looks very nice.

I'm at The University of Birmingham and I do Mechanical Engineering Going into my 3rd year now. There's lots of Maths...but the bits in between are fun

[Skoshi]

Go Helsinki!

Nice pictures Mike

[mancs]

Nice pics again

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...06/FSAE_18.jpg

Absolute the best

[ArosaMike]

Thanks for all the positive comments people I feel I'm getting somewhere with my telephoto now Been asked to take some pictures for a guy who races karts here in the UK which is cool He's paying me in track time Not driven a proper TKM on sticky slicks. Will be interested to see how it compares to the things I normally race!

[AxlxA]

more of the hot girls!!!!!

Wonder what "major" are they.

[tianluo]

Very nice pics ~ love those close up head pics.

I'm a Imperial student, I voluteenered myself to be the driver for the Class 2 racers since I'm a member of my uni's "racing (karting) society", but not knowing anything on mech didnt help, since I'm Computing student.

[ArosaMike]

Originally Posted by tianluo

Very nice pics ~ love those close up head pics.

I'm a Imperial student, I voluteenered myself to be the driver for the Class 2 racers since I'm a member of my uni's "racing (karting) society", but not knowing anything on mech didnt help, since I'm Computing student.

BUKC by any chance? I'm vice chair of our one next year LOL.

[Jmiller]

Those are nice photos and it looks like that would be a ton of fun. I wish there was something like that around me.

[tianluo]

Originally Posted by ArosaMike

BUKC by any chance? I'm vice chair of our one next year LOL.

Yep correct. We usually go to Bayford Meadoes to race. I wouln't have much time to go to events since it would be my last year next term

[ArosaMike]

I've been at it for 3 seasons now! I'd done next to no racing till I started in it in 2003, but I've finally found my way into the top 10 Had 1 win last season, so with a bit of luck we can do a bit better this coming year. We're gonna look for some sposors too as I understand that Will and Tom are trying to make the series a bigger enterprise anyway so it might be easier to attract them. So are you not racing much next season then? If you wanna come and find me at one of the test days in Nov then I can try and get some photos for you if you want Usually have my camera withe me, so as long as we're not both out at the same time I can get some pictures.