The Hochschule Niederrhein (HSNR) racing team ended the racing season with mixed results. This year, the team took part in the races in Most (Czech Republic) at the beginning of August and a week later at the Hockenheimring (Germany).
Both race weeks are part of the international Formula Student racing series, in which 700 university teams compete against each other worldwide. This year, the team competed for the first time in the e-car category with their self-developed car "RS-24e". In addition to vehicle design and roadworthiness, technical aspects such as acceleration and efficiency as well as economic factors (business plan) are also assessed by the jury.
The first race took place at the "Autodrom Most" in the Czech Republic. As in Formula 1, the Formula Student event was initially about passing technical scrutineering. Despite working hard, the team did not manage to pass any of the scrutineering tests, which meant that they only managed 38th place out of 47 participating teams in the final classification. Nevertheless, the team members were able to take away a lot of feedback on the first self-developed battery and high-voltage system. Many of the suggestions for improvement could be implemented directly at the next race at the Hockenheimring.
The team did not have much time to tinker, as the race at the Hockenheimring was scheduled for a week later. Here, the team failed the mechanical scrutineering, but unfortunately a problem was found in the battery, which could not be fixed on site. As a result, the car also came to a standstill at the Hockenheimring and did not collect any race kilometers. As a result, the HSNR Racing team finished 75th out of 79.
"On a positive note, we received a lot of feedback from officials of the organizer, but also from other teams. We want to use this for the coming season to build a car that passes the technical approvals at the events and competes successfully against other teams on the race track. We are building on the existing concept, as this has been praised several times," says Kai Lüning, team manager of the HSNR racing team.
