High Speed Karlsruhe wins Formula Student Germany
After a glorious victory in Hungary, the Formula Student team of Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences (Die HKA) also succeeds at the Hockenheimring racecourse. In addition, they are awarded first place at the Sportsmanship Award for being genuine team players
August 22, 2022
With the laurels of winning the competition in Hungary in mid-August still fresh, the Formula Student team of Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences (Die HKA) surpassed itself when taking part in the last competition of this season: Following Hungary, High Speed Karlsruhe also won Formula Student Germany in the combustion engine class, which was held at the Hockenheimring from 15 to 21 August, 2022. With two overall victories in 2022, the HKA team experiences its most successful season in 16 years.
"After the victory in Hungary, the entire University kept its fingers crossed for our team at the Formula Student Germany and eagerly looked forward to the results," emphasized President Prof. Dr.-Ing. Frank Artinger. "Winning two competitions in a row in one season is an extraordinary achievement for which I would like to congratulate the students from the bottom of my heart and express my special recognition.”
"Most probably, the secret of this year's team is its ability to react at lightning speed to problems and find solutions or even improvise in crucial situations," enthuses Oliver Stumpf, who has supervised this project at HKA from the very beginning. "When the chassis broke at the first event in Austria, the team managed in a very short time to rebuild it in better quality and at the same time to prepare for the subsequent competitions. Which is a huge achievement by each individual and can be done only with the right team spirit.”
The competition is divided into various individual disciplines and the overall position is calculated from the results of the individual disciplines. In the Business Plan discipline, the HKA team took 5th place at Hockenheimring, in Cost & Manufacturing 3rd place, and came fourth in the Engineering Design event. As for the dynamic events, the HKA team took 1st place in Skid Pad - a discipline in which the HKA team has traditionally excelled - and also in Efficiency. In Autocross the team took 4th place, 4th place in Acceleration and 1st place in the supreme discipline - the 22 km Endurance race. But the team came out on top not just in the classic competition categories.
For their support and help of other teams, the HKA students also won first place in the Sportsmanship Award.
The HKA team consists of about 50 students from the degree programs Automotive Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Mechatronics, Electrical Engineering & Information Technology as well as Business Administration & Engineering, Computer Science, and Computer Science & Media. Within nine months, the students have developed, designed and manufactured their racing car, the F-116. The main task of the international design competition is to produce a racing car that would be suitable for small-scale production. However, speed is only one aspect; the overall concept is evaluated, which also includes acceleration and braking performance as well as design, weight and calculated production costs. In order to develop a fast, agile, safe, economical and reliable racing car that is also cost-effective, the students need to plan and coordinate the project in detail, including a marketing strategy, business plan and cost report. This requires many engineering-specific skills, as well as extensive business and marketing skills. The idea behind this competition is to give students an attractive opportunity to put the knowledge they have acquired during their studies into practice.
