Success in Netherlands!

Our team waited exactly 690 days for the next Formula Student race. Due to the pandemic, all Formula Student competitions were canceled in 2020. Last week, our team took part in our first one of the 2020/2021 season, namely Formula Student Netherlands, where we had the opportunity to compete with the Dragon X our combustion vehicle. How did it go?

All competitions this season in the FS take place under strict anti-coronavirus precautions, and this was also the case in the Netherlands. We could only participate with a limited number of members, which made our whole race week very challenging.

The whole race started well for us on the first day, when we went through the first part of the technical inspection without any problems. On Tuesday, three more parts of technical inspection followed, namely a noise test, a brake test and a tilt test. Again, we passed all the tests and so the whole technical inspection was completed for us. During all this tests we also participated in static disciplines such as Cost & Manufacturing or in the finals of Engineering Design. After all these static disciplines, we finally got ourselves and Dragon X where we want to be to from the beginning, on the circuit!

What are all the dynamic disciplines at Formula Student races? The first of four dynamic disciplines was skidpad, where our goal was to drive through the shape of infinity sign in the shortest possible time. This discipline was modified in the Netherlands – the entire track of Skidpad was made wet artificially.

Unfortunately, we managed to complete only 2 out of 4 possible attempts in discipline Acceleration. Time and weather played a huge role throughout the race week, so we preferred to go straight to another dynamic discipline – Autocross with a successful time from acceleration. There we finished 3rd day and started preparing for the last dynamic discipline – Endurance. It tests the vehicle at a 22 kilometer long track. Endurance is the scariest part of every race for all teams, because it often happens that cars does not complete the discipline, which means a loss of up to 425 points. We successfully completed 11th Endurance in a row!

In overall, we had an excellent feeling of the whole race week in the Netherlands, which was further enhanced by the overall 3rd place in the category of combustion vehicles! So we were able to repeat the success of the last participation in the FSN, when the team also finished in 3rd place in 2019. We were consistent in gaining points and this is what guaranteed an overall success and the opportunity to stand on the podium.

We finished:
3rd place – CV Overall Classification
3rd place – Engineering Design
5th place – Skidpad
5th place – Endurance
5th place – Efficiency
6th place – Business plan
7th place – Autocross
7th place – Cost & Manufacturing
10th place – Accelaration

Now, we are already focusing on another race, which is FS Czech.🇨🇿 We want to show even better performance at our home race, so we are already working hard on our two cars to achieve that.

This all wouldn’t be possible without the support of our University and also our sponsors and families.
Thank you!