This is Part 12 of a series written by guest writer Ricky Nietubicz on his experience on the Formula SAE team at the University of Delaware. FSAE is a competition where students design, build, and compete with small formula-style racing cars. Ricky was President of his FSAE club, and his team went to the Nationals in Detroit during the 2006-2007 season.

You’ve heard it plenty of times before, if you’ve every been around racing- “the best modification you can make to any car is to improve the loose nut behind the wheel.” Maybe not those exact words, but you know it- especially in tight autocross courses, the driver is the single most important deciding factor between a slow car and a fast car. More than likely, you don’t have a team of professional drivers, and even if there are a few really good drivers in your university, it would be hard to seek them out. Not to mention that even if Michael Schumacher himself joined your team, he could only drive in two events at competition- a rule intended to insure that the car, not the driver, is being tested more, as it is an engineering competition.

This means that any FSAE team would be better off letting everyone drive in practice- you never know where your great driver will come from. There will be members with great knowledge, academically, of vehicle dynamics, who turn the slowest lap times, and there will be other people who just know how to hop in and make the car go like crazy. The only way you’ll find out where everybody stands is to take some time and get everybody on the team to take turns behind the wheel. An “everybody who works on the car can drive the car” policy helps with recruiting as well as shaking out the best drivers- who said there was no such thing as a win-win?

Unfortunately, time behind the wheel isn’t quite enough. Some system of driver training must be established, ideally by someone who knows their way around a race track. It is worth talking this over with local autocross clubs or performance driving schools to see if you can get an actual classroom training session in order. We instituted a policy that everyone must go through a driver training session before they could get behind the wheel after some incidents involving a curb (actually several curbs on several occasions), a very new Chevy Impala (or was it a Malibu?), a light post, and, of course, a smacked up race car, some bent A-arms, and the like. Some basic training went a long way.

From that point, however, once the basics of vehicle dynamics, such as slip angles, “when in a spin, both feet in,” how oversteer and understeer work and how to correct them, the concept of “lines” and the like have been covered, seat time is the only thing that can help. Lots and lots of seat time. Also, and this goes out primarily to officers, encourage your team to keep current and always read more, rather than less, about car control, vehicle dynamics, lines both wet and dry, and general technique. Noah’s articles are a great place to start.

Selection of drivers for competition is simple. Take the pool of people who are going to competition, and set up courses for every event per the descriptions in the FSAE rulebook. Every event. Don’t skip anything. Now, every driver should take a turn with every event. Those with the fastest times in each event drive whatever they’re fast in. Pretty simple. Sound time consuming? You bet. We did this over spring break- we drove for a few days so that everybody had a good feel for the car and we had the kinks worked out, and then we took turns over the course of a full day running through each event. Selected the fast drivers, figured everything out, it worked well.

It is important to emphasize the driver as an athlete and encourage the team to never stop training. Driving days are a good start, so are trips to local autocrosses, whether with the current FSAE car, older FSAE cars, or personal cars. It makes a lot of sense to keep older FSAE cars, that you think you have no use for, serviceable as driver training tools. Older cars tend to take on lives of their own, so I’ll address this later.

In the quest for becoming a great driver, or finding a great driver, remember that there is no such thing as too much practice. Unfortunately FSAE cars are single-seat, so you can’t take laps with any sort of instructor along for the ride to coach, critique and advise. Therefore, you have to rely on teammates to spot where you’re going wrong, as well as your own judgment and laptimes. Video that you can go over later is good here.

The theme that will recur here is that FSAE should be taken seriously if you want to be seriously competitive. This means taking driving days seriously as time to test and tune the car, as well as hone driving skills and techniques. It means planning and reviewing after the day is done. This doesn’t mean that it has to be all work and no play, it’s ok to blow off a little steam every once in a while, do a couple burnouts, do some donuts, drag race the car against a Mustang 5.0. The only word of caution is that once one person does this, everybody will want to take their turn doing it- so it’s not the best thing to start off a driving day with if you have 15 people out. It isn’t a bad thing to do if you have a half dozen people out who have just driven all day. Judgment is key.

Getting familiar with an FSAE car is important. Each will have its own quirks, but always remember that you’re dealing with a small, mid-engined car, a go-kart on steroids (or an F1 car with severe anorexia). Most likely, it’ll be a totally different driving experience from anything you’re used to- so encourage the newer members of the team- remind them that the best drivers got that way from practice and work, they didn’t just hop in and go. Just like anything else in FSAE, building a crew of good drivers is a process, just like designing and building the car itself.