An Indian Formula Student competition

Humans of Formula Bharat

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humansofformulabharat

From the 10th standard, I was interested in electr

From the 10th standard, I was interested in electric vehicles. And I just wanted to make electric vehicles more affordable for people, knowing fully well that adapting them will be a slow and tedious process.

So as a part of it, I always wanted to do something or try something which can create an impact. With much luck, I found out about Rizel Automotive's founders who are also the Formula Student alumnus. Although this happened by coincidence, still this is what I wanted from the beginning

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People around here, like throughout the USA - they

People around here, like throughout the USA - they know what FSAE is, or at least they try to get to know what FSAE is. Or else, like they are ready to listen to us. But back in India, I’ve seen people who don’t understand it and I have to use terms like race engineering or race car. Then I would get a retort back in the form of “Race car! It’s not feasible. You kids are a bunch of small people who don’t live in a real world.” I have come across people like that. They don’t understand what FSAE is and they won’t try to listen to us. That’s one of the differences. People here in international teams, they listen. And in India, they won’t.

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When I chose mechanical engineering, I was fascina

When I chose mechanical engineering, I was fascinated by automobile engineering. I still am. Cars have always been something I’ve been looking forward to. The quality of cars, the capabilities, and everything around it. When I was a kid, I always liked to understand how things function. The curiosity behind it has still stayed with me.

About a year into my engineering, I attended an orientation about Formula Student. I had an instant connection that this is what I was meant to do. I truly felt that. From there, it kind of took off. I helped to make some Baja vehicles. Slowly, we went to electric vehicles. I was predominantly in vehicle dynamics modeling like suspensions, brakes, tires, handling, and the workings.

In junior year, we focused on the mechanism of the car. I went on to lead the vehicle dynamics system. I made many new friends. That has been the important takeaway. Now I reminisce about the good old days. The hunger and knowledge of the practicality of things have stayed with me.

Even in my current job, I check for the mechanisms and workings myself. I’m in the manufacturing sector and the practical workings and challenges still excite me. And Formula Student and Baja prepared me for that. Everything about who I am, the knowledge, workings, practicality, and manufacturing, has a lot to do with my time as an engineer and as a team member.

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It was just the next day after Diwali in 2018. We

It was just the next day after Diwali in 2018. We had taken our accumulator to one of our sponsors for testing as they had a load bank. Three of us were there and we worked on the connections. There is this test with almost all of the electrical stuff, which we call a smoke test. Once you press the start button, there’s a high possibility that something starts burning - it happens a lot. We call it 'magic smoke'. If there is no smoke, then you are satisfied that nothing got burnt in the system.

Unfortunately in my case, as soon I switched it on, we saw the 'magic smoke'. We took a moment to calm down and opened the panel. Then we spent an entire hour trying to figure out what exactly went wrong. We even connected the BMS on our laptop and it was still not working. That sent chills down my spine. It was not even about the money but the time. We were close to the competition and there was a high possibility that I had burnt the only BMS we had. Even if we had ordered a new one, it would have taken a few months to arrive in India.

At first, my senior believed that the smoke was coming from the BMS. This made me lose my mind! I got up and left. I just started walking aimlessly. Looking back, it feels like a childish thing to do, but back then I was thinking that I had jeopardized the efforts of 40 people! I switched off my phone. I went home and told my dad about this. He said it was okay, stuff happens. My team freaked out from my disappearance and checked with my parents if I was okay. My senior also called and assured me that "even if it was the BMS, no one would have said anything to you".

Later we found out that it was just a resistor that had burnt down as I had not wired it correctly. Knowing this, calmed me down. When I met my team the next day, they said that it was okay, that whatever happens, I don’t have to face it all by myself; that we all would figure it out. That spirit stayed with me to this day.

If things go haywire, I've realized that you just don’t get up and leave. That’s cowardly. If you’re a responsible person, then you face those situations head-on. You stick around, calm down and try to rectify things back to normal.

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In my first year, we were pretty much ready to go

In my first year, we were pretty much ready to go to Formula Student India 2015, which was later called Formula Design Challenge. The captain of our team was testing our car at that time. Unfortunately, he crashed into the wall and then went into a tree. The entire front of the car was utterly destroyed. I mean, it was completely knackered. The impact attenuator hit at a side angle, so it could not take up most of the load. We had to change it because it was damaged completely. Because it couldn’t take up all the load, the chassis was bent from one side. He got out luckily, quite unscathed - with just a shock as an after effect. The entire rack was broken, both the suspension assemblies were broken.

Initially for me as a first-year member, I thought this was unachievable and we can’t get out of it. And this happened on the 25th or 26th of December? So it was right before the event. We had a team meeting and all the seniors were there. That was the fastest working team I’ve ever seen. In half an hour, we dismantled the entire car, got all the broken pieces out of our car, and separated everything to assess the damage. We had holidays for the New Year and Christmas, which we had to cancel and we worked throughout that 10-15 day period. We got the car rebuilt and went for the event.

So that was one moment that was a memory for me, although not a good one initially but that point forward, I saw what you can achieve if you just never give up. Because a month before the event with the car completely damaged, I really would have never thought that it was possible had I not seen it.

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It is difficult to stay calm when your team is not

It is difficult to stay calm when your team is not clearing TI. When everything technically that was supposed to go wrong, is going wrong at the competition. Like just before the business presentation, I remember the brakes also started leaking, and we were due for the next brakes test. So before 4 o’clock, we had the brakes test and next day at 11 in the morning we had our business event. It was continuously running at the back of my head. Because we were just 4-5 of us, fourth-year students, on the team and only four of us ended up at the event, the whole responsibility of the competition was on the four of us and everyone else was looking up to us on what to do next.

Although the business presentation went great actually. As soon as we entered the arena there, we forgot everything and just went with the flow. Everything we were supposed to speak, we spoke. The judges were impressed with our financials. We got everything right - every justification they asked for, we were able to answer. There was not a single part where the judge suggested that we should have included further information. Everything was on point. I have to state the funny part though. In the map layout that we displayed of our factory, we did not indicate an entrance. So one of the judges had pointed that out. I had to manage that query; it was an honest mistake. So I responded that the entrance was from underground. And he burst into laughter. Thankfully he didn’t punish us for this by reducing marks anywhere. We ended up finishing second in the business plan event.

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When I was getting into engineering, I knew I want

When I was getting into engineering, I knew I wanted to do it, and I wanted to do mechanical because I was passionate about cars. I was a very die hard fan of Ferrari. And I really wanted that someday, it would be in my garage. At my interviews for placements, I would be asked, “Why are you here?” I’m like, “Well really, I want to buy a Ferrari. That’s why I want to work, get some money” (laughs). So that has been the dream as a kid and I have a huge poster of it in my room. Like one fine day, I want to see the car. So that’s the reason I joined mechanical engineering. That’s also the reason why I joined the FSAE team as well.

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(2/2) As time passed on, the choice was clear. Eit

(2/2) As time passed on, the choice was clear. Either you can get disappointed and just leave the team, which some people did, or you could learn from that and aim to do better from there onwards. So that was the defining moment in my life. “Like next year we have to come back, our first aim is to at least clear the
technical inspection and participate in all the knowledge events.” My whole
next year was defined from that moment. We prepared a lot for technical inspection. We made a setup for the tilt test in our workshop. We made a lot of mufflers to clear the noise test.

In 2016, we went back to Germany and we cleared the technical inspection in our second try. That was the best we had ever done. Then we got to participate in all the dynamic events for the first time in our history. It was a satisfying end to the whole ordeal.

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(1/2) During the technical inspection at FSG 2015,

(1/2) During the technical inspection at FSG 2015, we faced a lot of issues. First day went by, the second day went by - we were struggling to pass tech. It was the third or fourth day, by which all the dynamic events went by and only endurance was left. We were able to get the tech, tilt, and noise stickers and the last thing that was left was the brakes test. After a lot of effort, we somehow managed to clear the brakes test and since the endurance event was left, we were happy that we could have a run at it. We had come so far. But then, once we cleared the brake test and we were taking the car back to the pits, our tech inspector passed us by. He stopped, took a look around the vehicle, saw that one of our brake discs was broken, and took away our technical inspection sticker. That was such a big heartbreaking moment at the time.

But still, there were 15 minutes left for the testing time to be over! Usually, this process to change the brakes disc assembly takes 3-4 hours but here we aimed to complete it within those 15 minutes. It’s an aspect that I discovered about myself - when pressure gets going, my mind blocks everything and I give a 100% in that moment. So it was myself, a colleague, and our team captain within the technical inspection area. And there’s a grilled fence behind us with all of our team members standing and watching us. Grease, blood, whatever that was happening - I don’t know what happened - but in those 15 minutes, we almost changed the whole thing. But we had crossed the scheduled time by 3 minutes.

We requested so much, we pleaded so much. But no. Germans are bang on time - if it’s 5 PM, it’s 5 PM. That was a big setback. A big disappointment for the
whole team.

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(2/2) “Now if I look back on my college years, I

(2/2) “Now if I look back on my college years, I would have taken the rule book a lot more seriously. Our team actually spent too much time on materials outside the rule book. This is where our struggles came in, this is actually what most teams do. Basically they will start thinking about suspension in too much depth, do a big MATLAB simulation which they will consider for a research project, they will try to impress the professors with their knowledge, but they don’t focus on the rule book. Like they design a very good suspension that can sustain endurance runs but they do not design keeping the rules in mind. If you just read the rule book and understand those constraints, you can devise a design from those constraints. Students often think that the rules are boring and it stops them from innovating, but you need to understand that it is primarily based on safety.”

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(1/2) “Our Faculty Advisor was very good. I thin

(1/2) “Our Faculty Advisor was very good. I think it was the main reason why we were able to accomplish all these things. And also through alumni support, which was also critical for us. So basically, once you register, you need registration money and on top of that, manufacturing facilities, like milling machines and a lot of other machines which the college did have but you know, you had to have very special access and approvals which were hard to get. Our Faculty Advisor was really helpful in all these aspects. He came to the competition with us, and he was there for us all the time. He would share knowledge on where we could get funds and which departments we could approach. He showed us that it can be done - if someone on the faculty really wants to support the team, then they can get funds for the students. He actually helped us raise the kind of funds we needed. When we failed at our competition, we thought that the college would discontinue our project because the faculty has already invested a lot of funds in it and since we did not show results, that we would be cut off. But he still continued it and our college is still participating to this day. So faculty support was there and college support was there - which was a good thing - in fact, I say it is a must! Running the project on your own money can be draining and it is very hard to do as well. We had alumni support too. They helped us monetarily as well. Sometimes it is good to have connections from college, because it really helps you. You are doing this project for the first time and you always need the kind of experience these support groups have.”

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I remember on my first day of judging, I was reall

I remember on my first day of judging, I was really worried about subjectivity. In that year, there were about 40 to 50 judges and at least 6-7 powertrain judges. All I could think of was, “These guys have more experience than I do.” And if I was judging ‘correctly’. “Am I judging the right things?” “Are we all judging the same things?” I was incredibly worried about this. I was talking to everyone and was trying to understand if I should ask the same questions as them. Everybody first told me to calm down. And then the experienced judges told me that you don’t need to ask the same questions. You need to follow your instinct. You see, if we blindly follow a pre-defined set of questions, then we aren’t judging the teams correctly, because different teams have different needs, approaches, goals and as such, different designs as well. In the time that he has available, the judge has to understand if the team is using the right principles of engineering to the challenge they have. And everyone's challenges vary. He needs to inquire, “What was observed last year?” “What were the bottlenecks?” “How did they use their data?” Some teams may have similar answers but many might not. And if we ask them the same questions, then we will not be obtaining the real engineering juice that the team has to offer.

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