Queen's Formula Racing 2010

On Wednesday the 9th of November the QFR team made the short journey to EI Sports in Bangor for a karting grand-prix. The event was naturally very competitive but also very enjoyable for everyone involved, with some very fast lap times. A big thank-you to EI Sports for their kind support.

1st Place - Paul Hesketh

2nd Place - Reuben Mc Naughton

3rd Place - Mark Ballantine

Rachel and Bob representative from John Burn visited the QFR team on the 19th of October. John Burn specialise in materials for the composite and tooling industry.

Nick Evans from Tygavac part of the Airtech Group visited the QFR team on the 12th of October. Airtech manufacture vacuum bagging and composite tooling materials.

Professor Rod Smith along with other representatives from the Institute of Mechanical Engineers visited the QFR team on the 03rd of October.

18/07/10 Day 4- Endurance

A good start to Day 4 after QFR picked up the National Instruments' prize last night for the best use of data acquisition on a car. This is the second year in a row that QFR have won the award..

QFR was one of the last cars out today after qualifying towards the end of the elite group of cars. James was immediately on the pace with laps consistently around 62 seconds. With the leading cars only two seconds quicker QFR was looking good for a top-ten finish in Endurance and overall. After completing his stint, James brought the car in to hand over to Glenn. The driver change went well, but despite much cranking the car would not start for the second leg. QFX was out of the event.

Further investigation back at the pits highlighted a problem with the fuel supply. Nothing serious, but enough the stop the car. The car has been packed up for the journey home and will receive some a closer inspection back at Queen's.

17/07/10 Day 3- Dynamics Events

The team had an early start to day 3 with first place in the queue for the accelleration run. There was a lot of debate over whether this was a good place to be as the track was still damp after yesterday's rain. With the track drying and keen to get a time on the board Chris decided to take one of his two runs. A solid time of 4.22 was the result, although there seemed to be more in reserve with a cleaner run. We waited about an hour before finishing the remaining runs and ended up with a slight improvement on 4.11 from Shane. With the fasted time so far at 3.86 that should give us about 60 points from 75 - a good start to the dynamic events.

The car went straight from acceleration to the skid pan. Again, no problems, with a reasonable performance in all four runs..There are 50 points available for the skid pan event so we shouldn't take a big hit in the overall classifiaction from this event.

QFR was first out in the Sprint event this afternoon. It looked like rain was on the way so we completed all four runs early in the session. All runs were clean and smooth, with the car performing well - looks promising for tomorrow. Results so far have been posted (below) and probably put QFR in the top 20. But with 400 points available tomorrow places could change dramatically.

Cost, 17th, 65 points (from 100)
Design, 21st, 100 points (from 150)
Presentation, 8th, 67 points (from 75)
Acceleration, 16th, 57 points (from 75)
Skid Pad, 33rd, 17 points (from 50)
Sprint, 21st, 62 points (from 150)

The good preparation continued to pay off on day two with the car passing the remaining scrutineering stations - tilt, noise and brakes - by mid-morning. The first static event was the cost event. the team was led by Ben and all seemed to go well with the judging. The car went straight from the costto the design event in the adjacent pit garage. Difficult to tell how this went, although the questions seemed didn't always provide an opportunity to discuss the better areas of the design. The business presentation completed the day's activity. Shane and Andrew returned very positive about the experience, so lets hope for a good result. Before heading home for the night, the guys completed a few outstanding jobs on the car and it should be ready for an early run tomorrow, when the accelleration run opens.

QFX had a mid-field position in the scrutineering queue this year and entered the Technical and Safety scrutineering early afternoon. No major problems to report and the moved onto the next stage on the tilt table. The tilt table has been a problem in the past with leaking fuel at elevated angles and this year was no different. Fortunately the problem was easily solved with the replacement of a sealing washer on the drain plug. Unfortunately, time had run out for day one and the car would need to return to the tilt test on Day 2.

01/04/10 Easter Update

With manufacturing work well underway, the QFR team has just completed the first Carbon Fibre composite mould half for the QFX chassis, which was cured in the autoclave at Bombardier Aerospace. The second half will follow shortly after the easter break upon completion of plug machining and lay-up of tooling pre-preg material.

14/01/09 January Update

With 90% of the design work completed for the new QFX car, manufacturing work has now commenced on bonding the epoxy tooling board for the chassis plug manufacture. Sections of this tooling board are currently being machined to the chassis profile on a 5-axis CNC machine in the university workshop. Upon completion of machining, these sections will be bonded together to form the complete chassis plug, and subsequently manufacture of the mould will commence.

04/11/09 QFR Team Karting @ EI Sports

On Wednesday 4th November the QFR team made the short journey to EI Sports in Bangor for a karting grand-prix. The event was naturally very competitive but also very enjoyable for everyone involved, with some very fast lap times. A big thank-you to EI Sports for their kind support.

1st Place - James Leckey

2nd Place - Chris Henry

3rd Place - Glenn Sloan

Queen's University has announced Eddie Irvine as Patron of its Queen's Formula Racing team. The new role will see the former Formula One star meet regularly with the team and join them during track testing of their cars.

Speaking of his new role, Eddie Irvine said: “Some of these students are going to end up in Formula One. Mark Gillen, one of the best people I've ever worked with during my time in Formula One was a Queen's graduate. So, it really is the people from here who will help Formula One to continue.

“The best teams are the ones with the best engineers. The technical people are actually in many respects more important than the drivers, because without a good car you simply won't win. Great engineering graduates are vital to Formula One and it's great to be working with the students at Queen's.”

Queen's Formula Racing team member Chris McKeown from Garvagh added: “We have had a very successful year so far, and the news that Eddie has agreed to be our Patron is the icing on the cake. The wealth of advice and knowledge he will be able to give Queen's Formula Racing will really serve to motivate the team, not to mention make us the envy of all our peers. Perhaps we can persuade Eddie to take up an engineering degree here at Queen's and then we will have our driver sorted for next year.”

Anyone interested in watching an interview with Eddie Irvine and the Queen's Formula Racing team can see it here: QTV Interview

Representatives from National Instruments visited the QFR team on 19th August to present the team with their prize from the 2009 Formula Student Competition. Queen's Formula Racing were awarded the National Instruments prize for 'Best Use of Data Acquisition in the Development of the Car'. As well as a trophy, the prize package consisted of a CompactDAQ data acquisition system and four I/O modules specified by the team, as well as a Labview training package for two students. This equipment will be used extensively in the development of the 2010 car as part of third year projects on chassis stiffness, anti-roll bar optimisation and data acquisition.

With both vans packed on Tuesday night, an advance party set off early this morning to catch the boat. This allowed the team time to register at the circuit and unpack the two cars and all the necessary tools before the inevitable queue for scrutineering which opens at 12:00 on Thursday. At the stage the rest of the team will have arrived at the event to help with any remaining setups.