Central Canada Branch continues support for student racing event Formula North 2017

The sixth annual Formula North, SAE rules, design-build-race competition was held at the Molson Centre in Barrie Ontario during the first week of June. Phil Apperly Hon-Sec, Central Canada branch reports on a successful event.

The Central Canada branch of IMechE has been a sponsor of the Formula North event for a number of years, providing judges in design and other categories as well as making promotional presentations at the Career Day which is held on the Thursday each year.

Around twelve years ago our branch sponsored the University of Toronto in their entry into Formula Student in the UK and they won.

Student teams from around North America and one from Brazil designed, manufactured, and raced vehicles to compete in either the combustion or electric sections of the competition.

Following inspection to ensure compliance with all safety and other rules, the design portion of the competition began early on the Friday morning, with several teams of judges each allocated a certain number of vehicles to assess against a set list of criteria. By 5:00pm the teams got back together to compare results and propose finalists. The judging teams then combined to decide on the final three and re-judged them to sort the final order.

The following day, the skid-pad, acceleration and autocross events were held. On Sunday, the endurance race was held over 29 laps of the car park track.  When all the scores were weighted and added up, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, came out on top with the Polytechnique Montreal coming second and the Ohio State University third (and also 1st in the Design competition).

Many of the students involved in the competition hope to make careers in the automotive world and make useful contacts via these competitions. As might be expected with advancing technology, again this year the lap times for the electric vehicles crept ever closer to those of the combustion-engined vehicles.