Technical University Munich speeds to success at Europe’s biggest student motorsport event
Budding engineers in the Technical University (TU) Munich team competing at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers’ Formula Student (FS) 2010 event are celebrating after being crowned winners last night at the four-day event at Silverstone, Northants.
FS is Europe’s biggest student motorsport event which challenges young engineers to design and build a single seater race car from scratch. The top prize in Class 1 was presented to TU Munich at an award ceremony in front of thousands of students, while ETH Zurich university won the Class 1A Category for low carbon vehicles.
The international competition, now in its 13th year, smashed records attracting more than 2,500 students to the event. FS 2010 saw the largest number of entrants than ever before, and was attended by Formula 1 legends including former F1 driver David Coulthard, Bob Bell, Managing Director of Renault F1 Team, Andrew Shovlin, Senior Race Engineer at MERCEDES GP PETRONAS and Nick Wirth, Technical Director of Virgin Racing.
Chief Judge, Richard Folkson, said of Munich’s efforts: “Congratulations to a team and car that fully deserved to win. They were consistently outstanding throughout the competition in a very hard fought and close competition. The team were exceptionally professional and well presented.”
On the University of Hertfordshire taking the highest ranking British spot he said: “Hertfordshire, like Munich, were fully competitive throughout. With a third of entries from the UK, they staved off a lot of stiff competition from some of the best universities in the world. The team also entered cars in Class 1A and Class 2 (Design) and the commitment of the students was incredible.”
The students’ cars were put through their paces in a series of dynamic events over the weekend including Acceleration, Sprint, Skid-Pad and Endurance. The idea behind FS is for each team to work as a phantom company seeking to produce a commercially viable car. Cost, design and presentation were also judged.
Graf Georg-Friedrich, team leader of the TU Munich team (left), said: “It’s great that our car has performed so well as everyone in the team has been working incredibly hard. It’s been our best year ever and we’ve had a fantastic time at the event.”
University of Stuttgart picked up the Class 1 Runner Up prize with Monash University collecting third place at the award ceremony. There were a number of other awards up for grabs last night at the highly competitive event including the Shell Most Fuel Efficient Class 1 Car which went to the University of Aberdeen, Best Class 1 Newcomer prize awarded to the University of Padova and the Autodesk Class 1 Design Winner which went to DHBW Ravensburg.
FS also ran its Class 1A category for the third year, in which entrants had to develop new and novel low carbon powertrain technologies, for which they were judged on sustainability rather than cost. The category, which is sponsored by the UK's Centre of Excellence for low carbon and fuel cell technologies, Cenex, focused on the sustainability of the design, and looked at how much energy was used and the amount of CO2 released during the manufacture of the car. Hertfordshire again, scored highly.
