Apologies for the absence of a blog for the final two days, but as you can imagine, work on the car has been non-stop.

Saturday started off well, with progress being quickly completed on the suspension system, that had been completely welded by the end of the day. It wasn't long before the cooling system was plumbed in and the steering system assembled, albeit with some welding only tacked.

The Results for the static event came through during the day, with 29th for Business and 30th for the Cost report. A result the team were pleased with, given the lack of the car for cost (eliminating any chance of any deep dive points). The performance was hampered with the fact that the business team was focused on trying to get the car finished, limiting the time that the presentation and business paperwork could be finalised to out of pit lane hours (ie. between 2300 and 0700). Not bad for a first try though.

The design results were less pleasing, with a lowly 61st place. The affect of not having a completed car in this event, clearly was severe. It was still worth going thought the motions however, the team has gained a lot for Hockenheim, and next year in learning what is required to score well in this competition (ie. a car). Another criticism was the lack of supporting calculations, frustrating for a team which is often bogged down in over desig and calculation. More evidence of the work that went into design will be taken in future.

The late evening was spent trying to decipher the ignition wiring system. Unfortunately due to a shortage of wire in previous years the wiring had been hodge-podged together using different colours, meaning the wire tended to enter the shrink wrap at the injectors one colour and exit at the plug a different one. This caused much head scratching, as did the fact that nobody realised that the engine ran with all 4 injectors firing at the same time (and therefore wired to the same port on the ECU). By the time the pitlane closed, the team was ready for a well deserved BBQ and a couple of beers, before an early start the next morning (rumour had it that the pitlane was actually open before the advertised time of 0700hrs).

The FRB work early on the Sunday morning to good weather (for Silverstone), to a dead Formula student campsite. It appeared nobody on the team had overslept, and all had managed to get up before the Germans (almost unheard of). This allowed full access to the showers, and a quick start on the car, getting straight on with wiring for the now urgently required electronics. As more team members joined in the pits after driver's breifing, the track rods and drive shaft were quickly assembled, and by midday the moment finally came and the FBR10 had a rolling chassis!. There was little time for jubilation, and the car was back on the jack stands within a couple of minutes. A large positive camber on the rear wheels, and some negative camber on the front, gave for a slightly odd looking FS car, it was clear that there was some set up work to be done. The team was in high spirits with the promise of a scrutineering check, sometime before 1930. The afternoon session again focused on wiring up the electrics. The conditions were difficult, with the gusty weather tending to cool the soldering irons, making melting the solder an arduous task. By around 5, the endurance races were coming to a close, and with the garage becoming ever more empty with teams packing up, as much for scrutineering was completed as possible. The intake was plumbed in, the safety harness attached and brakes bled. By 1730, the team made the decision to take the car to scrut, at this last oppertunity and gather as much info. on what needed to be changed for hockenheim as possible. In the event, this did not turn out to be as bad as was feared, with the most time consuming change, having to be a re-weld of a steering bracket as it was too low.

That concluded the event, with the lucky ones staying for the after event BBQ, and the rest going home back to work on monday morning. Overall the competition was a success, not in the sense of the car's performance (this was the first year that the car finished the event not even being completed), but for probably the first time in FBRs history the car was truely a whole team effort, all 20, from 1st years to 4th years. It was formula student as it should have been. And that, being carried into Hockenheim, and future years, is of much more benefit for Formula Student in Cambridge than a core group of 4th years with a little help from the rest of us struggling our way to endurance on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

Today things turned completely, and in the right direction. From day break, a team full of enthusiasm and optimism began work on what, at the time was only a chassis and an engine. First up was the business event, a late night finalising the presentation made for a nervous morning, but cometh the hour, the presenting team felt they had pulled it off, being praised for their enthusiasm in the product (the FBR10). There were points to work on however, a more thorough business plan was suggested, to really get a chance for the top presentation; but there was much positive feedback for the performance in the question and answer session. Design came next, and was always going to be tricky with such little of the car actually completed. The team tried there upmost though, with good effect, talking about their components and using their ingenuity to provide evidence, bringing along jigs and prototypes. This pleased the judges, but a lack of paper trail, and calculations supporting the designs provided a point for improvement for the Hockenheim competition. The cost report immediately followed, and again a lack of complete car, immediately made it impossible to score any 'deep dive' points (wherein the team are asked about specifically about manufacturing certain parts of the car they have designed). A presentation on upright manufacture went well, the team were optimistic for this given our uprights have previously been complimented by the judges. To score more next time, extra detail into the business implications, and time management would be needed.

Even with the amount of time (about two very precious hours in total), taken out of the day with static events the team managed to forge ahead and finished the day with the car unrecognisable from what had been delivered the night before. The steering and dash were attached, the suspension rockers were added, the bodywork was tooled and attached, the entire cooling system was plumbed in, the pedal box was pieced together, the intake inside cleaned and painted (to prevent Alumide dust being sucked into the intake, cf. Hockenheim 2009), 28 bearings were turned (many thanks to the Delft team for their help with this), more bearings which had failed to be delivered were sourced, the floor was cut and attached, the data acquisition loom was wired in and the wishbone tubing was sourced cut and jigged. The transition gained congratulation from judges and friendly neighbours. By the evening, the team was flying through the work, and frustrated by the 2300 closing time for the pitlane. Fortunately some suspension metal-work could be taken back to the campsite, finishing off in the early hours of the morning.

This has been an important day for FBR, not only have the whole team demonstrated much enthusiasm and gained a lot of experience, but for one of the first times at Full Blue the car build was sped up by the pulling together of the whole team, rather than the build only being possible by the skills of a few core-team members. This bodes well for future years, since it is a demonstration that the team has depth, rather than suffering the problems of so much knowledge by the (4th year) core team leaving university after the competition.

The decision was taken in keeping the car at Cambridge until today, so that Wed Night progress would not be restricted by the 10pm curfew.

As a result, pleanty of progress was indeed made, particularily in the pedal box area with a day on the lathe, turning a brake balance bar and cable pullers. Alterations also needed to be performed on last years braking system to accomdate this years shorter pedalbox. The powertrain took the brunt of the work effort with drivetrain plates being waterjetted. A massive thanks to the workshop team back at CUED for time spent machining a pressfit for the spool bearing, also completed today. Little jobs; making circlip grooves, turning components for the gear change system and dismantling last years chain tensioner inevatively took up a more than their fair share of the time, delaying arrival of the car until 2130. Officially this gave us 30 minutes of unpacking and work time before the pits officially closed at 2200, but, erm, yeh.

Bodywork progress steamed ahead over in Newbury, with the final 3 layers of the 4 layer Carbon Fibre finish for most of the components being completed. The nose was strengthened with Nomex core, but due to time constraints it was felt that the low load bodywork areas, such as around the cockpit would surfice without. This also obviously gives us even greater weight advantage. The components are now vacuum bagged up, in the 'clave and all being well will be ready for a laquer finish, tooling and the all important stickers tomorrow.

It's raining heavily, blowing a gale and the Gazebo has collapsed under the strength of the wind. It's Silverstone again then.

An advance party has arrived and buisly been preparing the garage awaiting the arrival of the car tommorow evening. It is currently back at Cambridge HQ, with team members busily trying to finish off the car as best we can.

This morning the not so minor issue of the engine not fitting in the chassis became aparent, a result of changing engines from last years, dead, R6 to the (almost) identically sized Fazer 600. After some changes to the engine packaging, the engine now fits, and all is well.

On the downside, we've had to wait until tomorrow for the new rockers and bearings to arrive, and an unfortunate event involving the wishbones and them being reversed over by the manufacturers lorry, has left us with no way currently to attatch the wheels to the car. Looks like its going to be a classic Full Blue Racing, no sleep from now on sort of event.

Full Blue Racing has been plagued with engine troubles, putting the team out of the competition.

Following a trying day on Friday, the team was confident that Saturday would be better and set to work intent on passing noise and brake in time to compete on Sunday. With an engine that refused to start, the team performed a systematic check of the powertrain and electrical system to identify the problem.

Over time it became clear that the ignition coils were at fault and hence the engine was not receiving a big enough spark to ignite the fuel in the cylinders. The team runs an uncommon 'homebrewp' ECU due to budget constraints and requires ignition coils that are not used by many teams.

As always the team was not beaten and whilst a group searched for new coils, 2 other groups investigated opportunities for implementing alternative solutions and attempted to identify the original cause of the problems. Eventually, the problem was identified as a grounding issue in the electrical system, only becoming apparent at the high current levels drawn by the coils. This was fixed and the team were set to try noise with just 10 minutes of scrutineering time remaining.

At this point the absence of our engine tuner came back to haunt us and we were unable to get the engine to run in time to pass these tests. The rules fo FSG have changed this year, meaning that the team is no longer able to pass scrutineering on Sunday - this has unfortunately meant that the team cannot run this weekend. The team is obviously devastated by this news, but is confident that the problem now simply lies in the tuning of the engine and could easily be solved with more time and better engine testing facilities.

So the team now looks forward to next year - today will be spent soaking up the atmosphere, looking for ideas from other teams and of course lending a hand wherever possible.

The team has placed 2nd in the cost event at Hockenheim!

This event judges the team on its ability to produce a cost effective vehicle, and to document the costs of the vehicle's fabrication and construction. The team had to submit a detailed cost report, documenting materials, processes and assembly tasks for the whole car - even down to the last nut, bolt and washer!

At the competition, the team then comes under scrutiny from a panel of judges regarding this cost report and the final car, before presenting on a deep dive topic. This year's topic focussed on cutting the cost of the car by 20% - a difficult task for what is already the cheapest car in the field! The judges were impressed with the level of detail in the report, and the presentation was praised for 'covering everything'.

This will be the first time that the team has brought home silverware from a competition, and the team now looks forward to gathering more in the future by building on this success.

Today turned into the predicted long slog for Full Blue Racing, with static events and the team attempting to complete the noise and brake tests.

The static events are now completed, and the team has heard its result in the business presention - 39th, meaning the team has retained a similar position to that acheived in Silverstone. The team entered the design event with confidence, the car having passed scurinteering pre-design for the first time in the team's history. This was unfortunately overshadowed by a design judge (not involved in our judging process) exerting excessive force on the steering system and causing damage that required a trip back to scrutineering. The cost event went more smoothly, and the team is awaiting the results of design and cost tomorrow.

The 90 minutes consumed by fixing the steering and re-scrutineering further compounded the problems the team were having in the engine test area. With the normal engine tuning 'guru' still stranded in Belgium, the team has struggled to get the engine to run. Despite the team's best efforts and the generous help of numerous other teams (many thanks to Brunel and Birmingham in particular) the team is still in a stalemate at close of play and the issues are threatening once again to prevent the team running in Saturday morning's events. This problem can be linked back to a lack of any facilities for testing the engine and powertrain and hence a reliance of the team tuning the engine in 'no-load' tests in the finished car. Work is already underway to improve this situation for next year and any offers of help are welcome!

So all in all a tough day for the team - a lengthy fault finding process is underway to try and maximise our chances in the morning, having just 4 hours to get through noise and brake tests if we are to compete in the dynamic events taking place.

We are not beaten yet…

Apologies! The team has been caught up in the fast paced few days of competition and has only just had time to blog…

Following the long day and night queueing on Tuesday, the team was set and ready for scrutineering by Wednesday night. This morning (Thursday) the team was assessed and passed scrutineering just after lunch, following a few minor problems being rectified (and a large problem in the form of a fuel leak!). Straight over to the tilt table and the team also passed this second time, before weighing in slightly heavier than at Silverstone. This is attributed to the differences between the 'dry' weighing in the UK and 'wet' weighing in Germany. The team now faces noise and brake test in the morning, a full 2 hours earlier than in Silverstone and giving a day of tuning and testing before the dynamic events start on Saturday. This is welcome as the team member in charge of the tuning is currently stranded in Belgium with a broken down car! Add to this that 3 of the 4 drivers registered this weekend will be driving for the first time and it is promising to be an interesting weekend! Tomorrow will see the team tested in the static events - business, design and cost. The team is looking forward to these events, better prepared than ever following the srong performance in Silverstone and encouraging feedback from the judges. We will let you know how we get on tomorrow - for now it is a well earned shower and sleeping bag as the team looks forward to an early start in the morning.

Full Blue Racing touched down in Hockenheim on Tuesday morning, following a long drive through the night.

The team left Cambridge on Monday afternoon, and just 12 hours later was in Hockenheim setting up camp. The rest of Tuesday was spent unpacking, planning the week and preparing for static events, and catching up on some sleep! The latest innovation at Formula Student Germany (FSG) is the new queueing system, whereby each team gets a queue number and retains this for the rest of the event. Having queued for the queue number (for 18 hours!) the team was assigned #34. This then determined when the team could register and get in the pits. The team was setup and ready to work on the car by 4pm, and just had a few jobs on the car to prepare for Scrutineering on Thursday morning.

Full Blue Racing is preparing to leave for Hockenheim tomorrow afternoon.

Welcome to the Hockenheim blog foor 2009! As the team prepares to leave for Germany tomorrow afternoon, hopes are high for a strong performance. We'll be posting to this blog every day over the coming week, so you can keep up to date with everything that is happening along the way.