On June 22nd, we officially and solemnly unveiled our race car, Sisi, for the upcoming season, in the K-building of our university. The rollout event is always an exciting milestone of the season, it is the exact moment when long months of dedicated work finally come together, and we get to see tangible results. After countless sleepless nights in the workshop, endless assembly sessions, hundreds of hours spent in front of screens, and a multitude of redesigns and challenges, the entire team can finally pause for a moment to catch their breath. In the fast-paced world of Formula Student, this is the day we finally slow down. Our only task is to admire the result of our 10-month labor and share this moment with people who stood by us throughout this journey - our teammates, sponsors, families and friends.
Rollout
This year’s unveiling was preceded by an unconventional networking event organized for our sponsors. This gave us the opportunity to deepen our connections and foster an engaging dialogue about the importance of knowledge transfer and our partnerships. The professional presentations and discussions perfectly set the tone for the rollout. Once our invited guests took their seats in the assembly hall, the countdown began for the presentation introducing the car. During this, we shared insights about the team’s structure, the challenges of the past year, our engineering solutions and Sisi’s technical specifications. Following this, we summarized what lies ahead for the team in the remainder of the season, and then together, we finally unveiled our race car, codenamed FRED-005. Afterward, our guests spent a long time discussing the work processes with team members and had the opportunity to examine every single detail of the car up close.
Meet Sisi!
Sisi is not only aesthetically stunning, but also highly innovative from a technical perspective. This year, we modified our chassis layup, allowing us to achieve a significant 10% reduction in weight, bringing Sisi down to a mere 167 kg. Propulsion is driven by four in-wheel motors, equipped with custom-designed housings and motor controllers, capable of reaching 20,000 RPM. A dual-loop water cooling system with a custom-designed cooling block ensures stable operating temperatures. As for the brakes, we utilize an adjustable, dual-circuit hydropneumatic system, which is also essential for energy recovery. The heart of the car is a custom-designed accumulator of over 600 volts. In addition our autonomous system has undergone changes compared to last year's design, to ensure maximum efficiency and compliance with the updated rules, the Ouster LiDAR and a camera are now positioned on the main hoop above the driver’s head instead of the nose cone. Our aerodynamics package also received a minor upgrade, optimizing the wing element angles of attack and properly controlling the vortices in the airflow around the car. Compared to last year’s package, these modifications allowed us to achieve a 10% increase in downforce while also successfully reducing drag.
Summer Schedule
At the rollout, we demonstrated that both the team and the car are prepared for the upcoming races. We will spend the next month focused on fine-tuning and testing. However, at the very beginning of August, we will travel to Barcelona to compete at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, before wrapping up the season at the Hockenheimring for Formula Student Germany, the most prestigious European competition of the series. Unfortunately, our home event was canceled again this year, however, we already completed the Formula Student Easter warm-up competition, and we will soon share a detailed report of everything that happened with the team at ZalaZONE!
Finally, we would like to express our gratitude to everyone who attended our rollout event! It brought us immense joy to share this milestone with our sponsors and loved ones. Thank you all for the tremendous encouragement and support, and everyone who contributed in one way or another to making the construction of this incredible car possible once again this season!