Formula Sun Grand Prix 2019 — Day 4
The Formula Sun Grand Prix 2019 scoreboard can be found here.
Hello, it is me, Mr. Three Hours of Sleep. Had to be up at 5am for team to get to the track in July 4th traffic so we said first wave was leaving at 5:30. The reason we said 5:30 was because we knew we wouldn’t be leaving on time. We were right. My car left at 5:47 and made it to the RV park around 6:15. We found one team member asleep in the truck bed and the other was surprisingly awake. Turns out, they slept in the RV park for absolutely no reason because a critical component to charging (not entirely sure what it is) was stuck inside the locked garage at the track. So….we didn’t charge. Insert iPhone 20% battery warning here.
To make matters worse, we didn’t actually do any dynamic scrutineering from 7–8am. BPS problems continued to plague the electrical team and the car was unable to move this morning. Instead, we reinstalled the steering column, dashboard and windshield again and finally got everything set to go mechanically. I then attended the 8am team meeting, where CalSol decided they were tired of our team not doing the water-water-water, loo-loo-loo chant and decided to do it for us. Then it devolved into full troll for a few teams as everyone did random team’s chants. This was the important drivers meeting, as today is race day and they had to explain all of the rules of racing. They especially had to explain what to do if your car gets stuck on Turn 1, something that is probably inevitable for our car. Immediately after the drivers meeting was the team photo, which happens every year and all the teams bring their cars out onto the track for a giant group photo. Last year I complained about us being put in the back despite being the most aesthetically pleasing car there (not just my biased opinion, most people that walked by said this too). This year we got shafted again and stuck in the back right corner. Whyyyyyyy? I just want to be admired for our Tesla headlights and beautiful car.
After the photo we took an extremely scrambled Midnight Sun team photo, have yet to see how that turned out, and then booked it off the track to continue fixing our BPS. Meanwhile, the race was being set up with exactly four vehicles on the starting grid: Esteban, Kentucky, Western Michigan and Calgary. Really small starting grid, but from the looks of things it will be very different tomorrow. It was really neat to see the cars head out for the start of the hill and how every team in the pits was cheering the cars on as they climbed. And climb they did (except Calgary, they got stuck on the hill for four minutes). It was amazing, and I’m really ticked off I missed the start because I ran to get the gimbal I brought to record, and as I ran back I saw Western Michigan’s vehicle pass. So close.
The start of the race really showed the spirit of solar car competitions. For every car that passed the starting line, the pits erupted into cheers and then as each car passed the top of the hill, the pits cheered again. It kept going for maybe the first 15 laps as we celebrated every vehicle making it up the hill, and for good reason since that Turn 1 is absolutely insane. It’s what I enjoy the most about solar car competitions. It’s a competition, but no one treats it in a super competitive way. You can walk to any bay with any car and chat up the team, take pictures of their car and learn about why they made the decision to make something a certain way. They will cheer for you from the sidelines as you head out onto the track and will be hoping for your success as you climb the mountain. Several teams also offer their assistance if things need to be made or worked on. It’s really the spirit of competition and I love it.
Eventually, we finally got it ready and we set off for DYNAMICS! DYNAMIIIIIIIIICS! (finally). I wrote that out with the Handsome Jack voice line for explosive in my head (found the audio clip). The first two were pretty easy. U-turn was up first and we cleared it easily by maybe two meters. It reminds me a little too much of 2016, when our turn radius was so bad that we had to go all the way around the parking lot and Michigan’s semi-truck. The scrutineers love reminding us of that. Second was figure-8 and we actually passed this extremely fast too, about five tries before they told us to get out.
Next up was slalom. Throwback to when our car drifted during slalom last year (reminded heavily of this watching CalSol’s back half swing around after each turn). For most of our drivers, this was their first time properly going through a slalom course and the first several attempts were rather slow to get the drivers used to the vehicle turning (our lock to lock is 5 turns each way from center). The first two tries passed by ok, our driver was doing a decent job going through the pylons, then on the third run they pulled over after saying that the motor wasn’t working. We took a look on the side and theorized that the bolts holding the hub to the motor had sheared, so we made the call to take it back to the pits and fix it there. Turns out we were right, the wheel was moving independently of the rotor and after taking it off we found five sheared pins and one not sheared pin. This actually happened last year during FSGP and we had to fix a set of sheared bolts then. At the time, we installed spacers that would prevent the bolts from shifting up, however those were now missing from the motors. And I know why.
This is officially the big stupid moment of the competition for me. About a month ago I started finding small metal cylinders on the floor in our bay in Waterloo. At the time, I had no idea what they were for and no one else seemed to know either so I just set them aside and shrugged it off. Today, I realized that they were the spacers. Oops. So my dumb ass was directly responsible for this delay and destruction of bolts. Thankfully, it was only one side that sheared but both sides were missing spacers so that was a big mistake on my part.
We didn’t have more of the pins so we had to go ask other teams for them, then I spent 20 minutes grinding down the edges so they would fit in the now disfigured holes. Meanwhile we borrowed an angle grinder to make new spacers and eventually reassembled the rear wheels. Now that we were ready again, we headed out for round two of dynamics testing, where we went back to slalom and had one of our drivers pass twice to be approved for track racing. We were splitting the track with Solar Gators (Florida) and CalSol (UC Berkely) and there were some great moments where CalSol’s vehicle just ate several pylons. The pylons went right down the middle of the car and disappeared for a while before reappearing further down the track.
Unfortunately, we had a loss in brake pressure during the second set of runs so we packed it in again and went back to the bay to figure out what was wrong. We decided on bleeding the master cylinders since a full brake setup disassembly would take three hours, and it was already 3pm so it would kill any possibility of us getting onto the track today. While this was ongoing, we were desperately trying to charge the car to give us some juice to run the slalom. The pack is beginning to run low due to the lack of charging last night. The fix took about an hour and a half before we went back out to do more dynamics. While this was happening, CalSol qualified for the track and completed their first two laps ever with their car. It was really impressive to watch their car exit pit lane up the hill. Honestly, they didn’t even look like they slowed down at all as the NGM motors ran at full power all the way up the hill. It was impressive, and since they have the same motors as us I am filled with newfound hope.
We focused solely on the brake test for the end of the night. We ran it about a dozen times, including a couple with one of our drivers from last year (for consistency apparently) but were still short by approximately 0.2 seconds. It’s just like last year, so close, but this time we don’t have any extra weight in the front of the car so that may be the difference. We kept going until closing, but it looks like there’s a chance they may give us a pass based on a discussion that will happen soon.
We packed it in at 9pm when dynamics scrutineering closed, and then found out that one of our fire extinguishers was missing. We suspected that another team took it (and turned out to be right) but in the moment we weren’t entirely sure what to do since 1. There’s no markings to prove it was ours and 2. The loss of fire extinguisher put us below the required amount of fire extinguisher needed in the pits so we didn’t know if this was going to cost us the ability to race until we got a new one. Thankfully we got it back but it was a bit of a panic moment for a while. Also my head is killing me today, I don’t think it’s from heat but I suspect the three hours of sleep per night is beginning to catch up to me. At least I got home early tonight (left at 9pm) but jokes on me still sleeping at midnight.
It was all worth it in the end, since we got a blue sticker. This means that we can turn in our scrutineering sheet and get out onto the track for tomorrow’s starting grid. Really, really looking forward to watching our car get up that hill. CalSol did it with the same motors, we have no excuse.
FSGP Leaders (scoreboard)
- Esteban (Polytechnique Montreal): 81 laps (Challenger class)
- Calgary: 33 laps (Cruiser class)
It’s time to yeet (taps yeet clock drawn on wrist) — Kevin
