Formula Sun Grand Prix 2019 — Day 3
I got to sleep in. About four and a half hours of sleep…but you know that’s pretty solid given the past few days. Woke up around 10, was told I was leaving in five minutes and scrambled around for a bit to get ready to go and everything. Then I waited an extra ten before the shuttle was ready to leave. We arrived at the track around 11 and get informed that the car fell off the raised platform in the trailer when they were taking it out this morning. We were planning to do BPS (Battery Protection System) scrutineering at 9am, but since the car is still in the bay at 11 it clearly didn’t happen.
Part of this is attributed to the time it took to get the car back onto the ramp. BPS is also not ready, so that is delayed indefinitely. Scrutineering hasn’t been great all around but we’re currently leading MOV purely on stations visited. We still need to do BPS, clear a yellow in mechanical and weigh our car for body and sizing before we are allowed to do dynamic testing. Currently, only Esteban (Polytechnique Montreal) is cleared to race tomorrow and spent their day practicing tire changes, other operations and lounging around. Must be a good life, but then you get bored and lonely especially if you’re the only team on the starting grid. That’s why we fail things, to make it more exciting.
Also in the morning was the driver tour where our drivers got to go around COTA’s track for the first time, which was probably very impressive and I’m still awaiting the photos. It was also their first time getting a proper understanding of the mountain of Turn 1. You can see it from the pits but you don’t get a real appreciation of it’s height until you are on the turn going up the incline.
Around 12, ops arrived with lunch. Most of the team that had been at the track already is apparently tired enough for memory loss, with several claiming they had not eaten so far that day, but they all had pizza in the morning. Really makes you think.
The primary issues we had to deal with today were the set screws in our steering and fixing some panel gaps. Panel gaps eventually turned into door fixing, as the doors were getting caught in a couple spots. One team member has spent a lot of her time on the dremel grinding things down for us, and I felt bad having to ask her to do it again but I had to do it. Also one thing I find hilarious is that when she went to see Michigan State to ask to borrow a metric drill bit, they responded “we don’t have metric, only Freedom Units.” I’d like to now petition for imperial measurements to be renamed to “Freedom Units.” Can you imagine going into a hardware store and asking for a drill bit that is 3 units of freedom in diameter?
With steering back in, we rolled the car out to the pit road to do a transponder test. Our name is listed as UWM on the position tower as well, so that was really neat to see as we pulled out and rolled over the line needed for the test. With that finished, we turned back around and parked to reinstall the windshield and the dashboard. Finally the car is ready mechanically and we rolled out to the mechanical station again for a second round of testing. Also to prove that we actually have brakes. Round two in this fight also went to the scrutineers, as one of our seat belt bolts was too short (didn’t have 2 threads poking out the side of the nut) but that is the only thing standing in the way between our team and a green in mechanical. What would have been nice is if someone actually told us working on the car that it was the seat belt bolt. We were told rear left drivers bolt, so we were looking at the bolt holding the seat to the chassis instead, despite writing on our scrutineering sheets saying that it was the seat belt bolt. The scrutineer was not impressed with us when we called him back saying we fixed it and he looked down to see we hadn’t changed it yet. Scrutineer: 3, Midnight Sun: 0.
Fixing this one bolt was a surprising pain in the ass. The bolt is sized near M10 and we didn’t bring any, so remembering that American teams use mostly freedom units, we sent a couple people to University of Calgary to ask for an M10 bolt longer than what we had. My teammates dug through Calgary’s entire toolbox of bolts to find one, but we finally got a hold of one and called the scrutineer back to prove we aren’t completely stupid. Green in mechanical hell yeah, one step closer to dynamics.
Next, we had to load the battery boxes into the vehicle to weigh our car and I talked to CalSol (UC Berkeley) and Kentucky for a while. CalSol is apparently running on a 24 hour cycle, where for 16 hours the vehicle is at the track being worked on with one shift of people and for the other eight there is a shift of people at their airbnb that work on the car overnight. That’s pretty insane, but they aren’t done yet so I guess desperate times call for desperate measures.
Around 10pm is when we finally make it to BPS scrutineering. the next 45 minutes were pretty nerve-wracking as I cleaned the bay and sent people home. Scrutineers were pretty on our case to leave on time since we had been so late previously, so we packed up the best we could at waited. Finally we got great news: green. I guess the wait was all worth it but now we had to do some quick fixes and move the car to the RV park so we can charge overnight with some supervision. We aren’t allowed to leave things plugged in at the track overnight and for good reason. However this screwed up our shuttling AGAIN, so I’d like to talk to some people to try and get proper communication going so this doesn’t happen again. We ended up struggling a bit putting our car into the trailer, which meant we were at the track past curfew and the scrutineers were probably mad at us again, but we got to the RV park (which was super busy, probably 4th of July things since we have the track tomorrow) and set up for overnight charging. Two of our guys are sleeping at the RV park with the battery so hopefully they’ll be alive in the morning.
At the end of the day, there’s currently four teams that are greenlit to race on the track tomorrow: Kentucky, Illini (Illinois), Esteban (Polytechnique Montreal) and Sunseeker (Western Michigan). I highly doubt that we will complete dynamic scrutineering early enough to be in the starting grid, but the hope is that we come close enough that by early afternoon we are out on the track racing. This is what I’m hoping for, but it starts with an early wakeup and a lot of work in the morning on the drivers’ part. Here we go.
Since traffic has exploded recently to the posts I’ve been making on FSGP, I just want to thank you for actually taking your time to read this. I originally meant for this to be a way to remember what happened during the event (getting harder and harder as I get more sleep deprived), but it also seems to be becoming a way of keeping people informed and a way of entertainment for others. Some who don’t know anything about solar car racing are also reading this, and if you couldn’t care less but still read it thank you as well. I really do appreciate it knowing that someone else is reading this other than me, so thanks for putting up with me.
