Commentary Box with Oliver Webb

Our latest catch up in the Commentary Box is with Deputy Head Design Judge Oliver Webb, who brings his experience with Williams Grand Prix Engineering to the fore.

What common issues did you see with teams at Silverstone this year?

Approaching their current FS design as a ‘save as’ of last year’s car. Whilst teams should never ignore lessons learnt by past teams they should always always always START WITH THE RULES. It is in the laying out of a new design, and the major decisions taken along the way, that essentially defines the performance (mass, weight distribution, c of g height etc) of the new car. It is NOT in taking last years chassis and sticking new suspension pickups on to it.

What areas are still being overlooked?

General integration between the various car subsystems. By which I mean a set of suspension arms that look sensibly sized coupled to chassis pickups that look like they would be good for10 times the load capacity of the suspension members. This is quite tricky to achieve, but through good communication and with one or two people over-seeing the whole process these sort of inconsistencies are relatively easy to avoid.

What are you excited about for Formula Student 2018?

More teams being present, 20th anniversary celebrations, Cardiff trying to defend their title, having separate titles for IC and EV cars, whilst at the same time retaining an overall winner regardless of powertrain choice.

What should teams be doing in the run up to Christmas?

Benchmarking other teams and designing and building actual systems and prototype systems and trying to get them tested (either on rigs or by retrofitting them to a previous FS car).

Any other advice for teams this year?

Make sure it is one team members assigned job to be on top of all of the document submissions and the format and rules that they have to adhere to. Every year we see design reports that are 10 pages long (maximum is 8).