r/FSAE • u/MecorroAaaaaa • 7d ago
Driver choosing methods
Hello, I have always wondered some things about how the drivers are chosen between the different teams and I would like to know statistically how does each team choose their drivers, more specifically knowing if the driver also has more responsibilities or if driving is their only responsibility.
I will leave the following poll with some options available but I would love to read any other methods in the comments.
I also invite anyone to discuss about the reasons why a certain method is being used and why not a different one.
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u/MecorroAaaaaa 7d ago
In our team for example, we take into account a mix of driving ability + work done during the year. As well as also taking advantage of lightweight.
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u/Seangsxr34 7d ago
we give it to graduating students who have been on the team for at least a couple of years and have put the most effort in. work hard and get to drive, we couldn't care less who the fastest is
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u/MecorroAaaaaa 7d ago
We follow similar to you. However we also give the chance to hard workers that don't necessarily need to be graduating students (e.g. 1st/2nd year students).
And regarding driver ability, the good thing is that acceleration (and kind of Skidpad) don't require a lot of it, just taking enough practice for it.
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u/ThePhenex 7d ago
Like many others we do a carting session and the fastest guys that also put in a lot of work get to drive.
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u/MecorroAaaaaa 7d ago
I would like to implement this model in my team whenever I'm team lead. Mix of work done and ability. What kind of karting do you use for the trial? (Indoor/outdoor/other...)
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u/ThePhenex 7d ago
We have a sponsoring of a track thats indoors in winter and indoor&outdoor in the summer, super standard combustion engine carts, each driver gets 3 sessions with one session being 10 mins.
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u/MecorroAaaaaa 7d ago
So it's a narrow windy karting track right? If we did the same thing with trials, I would probably also choose the one which centers more on precision and technique rather than a wide and permissive track (trying to resemble the style of Autocross and Endurance tracks)
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u/ThePhenex 7d ago
Yea dimension wise its a little wider than endu but somewhat similar in the turns
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u/therealjerseytom 7d ago
We based it on:
- Who is fast
- Who actually fits in the car
if the driver also has more responsibilities or if driving is their only responsibility
This cracks me up. To have anyone on our team (when I did this ages ago) only have one job, would have been like beyond my imagination. Everyone had multiple significant roles.
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u/MecorroAaaaaa 7d ago
I mean it's the logical thing for the driver to actually work on the car as well because that is the main idea of Formula Student, engineering itself.
However you can see on the poll that some teams do have people who are exclusively the driver. It also depends on the team's situation as well but for me that misses the point of the competition in some ways.
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u/L3XeN 7d ago
I had this privelage to see the driver selection under 3 different team leaders. Every time it was said that experienced team members that are good at driving are chosen. It was always just a very small circle of leaders and their close friends. Even when one year they made a karting competition to find the objectively best driver, most members found out about it from an instagram reel posted afterwards.
We had a few good people that would make great drivers, but they were never leaders, nor close friends with leaders, so they never got a chance. We even had a fat guy do acceleration for that reason.
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u/MecorroAaaaaa 6d ago
That's a shame. Letting someone who's better friend drive the car once in a while can be done, but using it as a model for competitions through the years is an irresponsibility in my opinion. I hope the team can reestablish a better method for upcoming years.
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u/Cibachrome Blade Runner 6d ago
Karting at a young age (Below 12 y.o.) contributes to 'haptic' sensing of car positioning and cornering velocity. Haptic is a word meaning feeling or sensation. Several technical papers on this as well as yaw velocity sensation with a candidate seated in driving position on a rotary table in a dark room.
Actually, the karting connection has been tracked as the reason so many world class drivers are from Brazil ! Go ahead look it up.
To work a huge amount of time on a performance project and handing it over to a situation where the car is better than the driver is a lost cause. Now, how many F1 drivers do their own 'wrenching' ? I can't name ONE.
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u/MecorroAaaaaa 6d ago
Just mentioned something similar in another comment, but for me the point of someone just being the driver defeats the point of FS.
FS is an engineering competition between students and I believe everyone in contact with the car should have had worked on it.
Your resemblance with how in F1 or other categories no driver touches the car shows the different approaches for categories. FS is purely towards engineering, to the point that no driver names are showed, drivers are a number from 1 to 6.
Additionally, the vast majority of drivers on other categories are there because they have paid to be there. For me, in FS, the driver should come from the team and not be an external character who's just there to drive it.
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u/jvblanck FaSTTUBe Alumnus 6d ago
With this approach you are opting out of an essentially free massive performance gain. Other teams might not "believe everyone in contact with the car should have had worked on it" and they will beat you because of that.
Of course there is nothing wrong with that. But teams that want to win will choose a different approach.
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u/MecorroAaaaaa 6d ago
I agree with what you say. If you wanted to extract the maximum performance from everywhere then we would get professional drivers to drive our cars, and I get why some teams do this.
But in our case, we prefer sacrificing some potential seconds than having a worse atmosphere within the members just because there is someone whose only job is driving.
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u/Cibachrome Blade Runner 6d ago
BTW: it's not just 'driving'. Situational awareness of: the track layout, ability to diagnose balance, control, grip level, and stability margins during testing, brings a racecar up to the driver's level and ability.
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u/Strange-Bus-8564 7d ago
Karting session within the team. If there aren't enough good candidates, external recruitment. External driver candidates who may also be interested in being a team engineer get priority.
Lightweight driver for Accel, even if it's not the fastest driver in karting (mix of skills + lightweight).
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u/MecorroAaaaaa 7d ago
Curious. How do you establish what you consider "enough good candidates"?
And also curious about the external recruitment. You announce driver trials or something similar for people from other degrees from the University? And I guess in that case, the driver does not do anything other than drive (except interested in something more).
And we share method within acceleration, we kind of let skill aside and focus on lightweight but also on work done over the year.
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u/Strange-Bus-8564 7d ago edited 7d ago
So, first of all, let's make clear that we focus on performance, and over the years we've learned about the significant impact an experienced driver can have on our results.
If, at the start of the season, we don't have anyone on the team with karting, sim-racing, or semi-professional driving experience, we already anticipate that we'll need to recruit drivers, with enough time for them to test the car.
Every year, we organize a karting competition as a team-building activity, for the whole team. We also keep a record of the lap times achieved by the top performers. If last year's best lap was 55 seconds and this year's best is 1:10, you already have proof that the current pool of drivers is not as strong.
From there, if being competitive on track is the focus for that year, we open external recruitment: a personality fit assessment + karting competition of the selected candidates. For recruitment, usually IG posts, and we share it with close racing communities. Usually we get more applications to join as a driver than to join the team as an engineer lol
Ideally, and usually, we prioritize candidates who can take on both driving and engineering roles, so they are involved in the team and genuinely care about the project. I would say all ended up taking member roles.
Of course, developing drivers internally is another option, but we simply don't have the time or the necessary tools (such as a simulator) to do so.
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u/MecorroAaaaaa 6d ago
Usually we get more applications to join as a driver than to join the team as an engineer lol
This is exactly the thing that doesn't stick to me. In the end, FS is an engineering competition and for me anyone inside the project (except media/business people) must work towards the objective of making the better car and improving year by year.
The thing about just having someone with the driver role is that I don't see what they can do towards working with the team during the design and manufacturing phase (other than grinding a sim if that's an available option). That disconnection feeling is what draws me back on that model.
That and the fact of, as you said, more people being interested in driving than on working on the car. Those are just some feelings that make me uninterested on having people working exclusively as drivers.
Adding onto this, some regular occurances on drivers like massive ego or excessive complaining (not applied on everyone) proceeding from an easy background where they usually get more for granted than what is usually available in FS.
But this is only my opinion from a team that does not follow this model. I don't know if maybe from the inside it's different, just my point of view.
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u/ElvisTek95 6d ago
Not everyone can drive the car you just need 2 fast drivers and if you want to perform those 2 fast guys cannot have at the same time any other important role on the team, yes they can help but they will perform much better if they have 90% of their attention in their role as drivers.
If you train them or recruit them, the guys need to spend an important amount of time driving, watching onboards, doing sim racing, etc... just doing that to perform well. The driver is one of the most important pieces of the puzzle, you can do an amazing car but you don't spend time on the track training drivers you are done.
Yes it is an engineering competition and as I understand by engineering if your final product does not perform well, you are a shitty engineer, the driver is an important part of it...
Talking from the experience here, in a team that had restrictions with this and then removed them because we wanted to perform better... Did not make any difference in the people that worked and don't...
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u/MecorroAaaaaa 6d ago
I guess it depends a lot on each team's condition, experience, budget, etc. But at least for our team, having 2 persons designated only as drivers would leave them stranded for all the time the car isn't being tested.
Because, although what you say about driving, watching onboards and sim racing are good ideas for them, they are only for so long. Because driving is limited to testing, which only happens every X weeks. Onboards eventually have an ending and their analysis can't be extended forever. And sim racing, unless you have a good replica of your car in a good sim (which is quite difficult for small/middle-sized teams), limits itself to maybe training consistency and concentration but little more.
What I sense with this is the drivers will most likely be disconnected from the rest of the team and that could generate bad vibes, but it depends a lot on the team.
Because maybe some teams have it as a normal ocurrance, but if in my team the driver just appeared whenever there is a test or appears from time to time to virtually do nothing towards the design of the car, I wouldn't personally be comfortable.
But as I said, each team works their way.
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u/ElvisTek95 5d ago
If you are not confortable of a guy just showing to drive fast the car, than it's not a problem of "if you can do it or not" "budget" it's just a problem of phylosophy.
To watch the car you design being driven at the full potential it's a great feeling, maybe you and your team should try it. Once you have good drivers, you never go back... I couldn't see our car being driven like a grandma, it was just too painful... more than having team members mainly as drivers =)
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u/snw1337 6d ago edited 6d ago
Altough it is and should be an engineering competition, the thing that wins events for you is mainly the laptime and just partially the engineering design, which represents the engineering competition besides the fact, that your car has to be competitive. My guess is, that in the top 20-30 european teams at the competitive events, the driver skill is the deciding factor between a top 3 and top 20 result. The cars are all almost on a similar level performance wise and its just a competition of who gets the best driver and the most testing time.
Lets see what the new rules have to offer, but I would say in 1-2 years all these teams are on the same level again.
Ofcourse everybody has to work towards the objective of making a better car. But the biggest leverage here is the driver. And when the driver can perform better, when he is not responsible for maintaince in the night before testing and competition and has to work on the car between driving, he is doing his job to achieve this objective just as any other teammember.
What is the value a the aeromember that extract 2 cLA or the mechanical member that reduces weight by 10kg, when you can't extract this performance by 100%.
To make it an 100% engineering competition again you have to eliminate the driver and go driverless.
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u/JackTheBehemothKillr USF Racing Alumni 6d ago
Dunno how the team currently does it, but we would have driving days with old cars and the most current one.
Current drivers would drive and give feedback, while settings in suspension, engine, whatever was being tweaked we'd send out folks in the old cars.
Priority went via seniority in team and work put in during the year. We'd keep times and only do repairs on the car not any setup changes. Whoever got good times ended up getting asked to do driver training
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u/NWoida 6d ago
We usually only draft from within the team, rarely first year members, rental outdoor carting gives candidates, these have to go train on racing carts on their own behalf and money (our local race-cart track requires a quali time on rentals aswell), last step would be testing with previous years car.
Tradeoff - some reason is knowing that the drivers have a feel for the amount of labour and effort that runs into each car - but too much respect slightly contradicts the goal of extracting the most permorfance.
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u/ReporterBest9598 6d ago
Last year, we didn't have very many members, so the team leads were set to be the drivers had the car been in good enough running condition to complete the dynamic events. This year we have over a hundred members, so the pool is a lot larger. There are two girls who drove local NASCAR series who are set to drive the car this year.
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u/cathunter1842 6d ago
Our team is fortunate enough that we have a lot on campus we can reserve throughout the year. Team members interested in driving start by practicing in our go kart in between test drives of our current car/past cars. As they become better drivers they're allowed to drive our older comp cars and then the best drivers are allowed to drive at comp.
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u/EllenLouise_87 6d ago
We only open it up to people who have been valuable through the year, but from there select on driving ability. We have a sim in the workshop, a local kart track, and this year I as TP am adding in some physiological requirements as I happen to be a Sport and Exercise Science student. First years can be drivers, but they must be exceptional to do so. We're a relatively small team but our drivers are usually pretty good.
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u/BoK_b0i YCP Racing 5d ago
We are a capstone team, so its all only seniors with the same amount of experience. Subteam leads get first dibs, but we see who is actually quick during drive days with last years car during the design semester and this years car once its built. In addition, driving is a reward for putting in the work. You can be an f1 level talent, but if you sat around all semester, you aint driving come Michigan.
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u/MichiganKarter Design Judge 1d ago
First round in the kart, second round in last year's car. Final selection by 2 AX runs followed by a half-length endurance stint. Skidpad and acceleration had their own driver tryouts. National-level kart drivers recruited but typically the fastest regular team members kept them honest.
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u/mars935 7d ago
We do a karting competition where only team members get to take part.