Written by Rachel George
Track Day 05th July 2025
The team held another track day at Sydney Motorsport Park, primarily aimed at further developing potential drivers for the FSAE-A Competition at the end of the year. The Race Engineering team used the opportunity to collect additional data with multiple drivers, providing greater clarity for the final decision on the driver line up.
The team experienced a delayed start, with testing not commencing until 9:30 am. The shakedown completed by one of our experienced drivers revealed no issues, which enabled us to move straight into testing and driver development through several runs. For this track day, we were fortunate to test eight potential drivers for the competition: two experienced drivers who provided a reliable data baseline, four drivers who had previously driven the car, and two new drivers gaining their first experience.
The first session of the day was dedicated to autocross runs, which provided a valuable opportunity to assess each driver’s strengths and highlight areas for improvement. These runs also gave us clear insight into each driver’s raw speed, while allowing us to observe how quickly they could learn the circuit layout, adapt to changing conditions, and refine their technique.
Once the session was complete, the car was put on charge to ensure we had enough battery for the start of our endurance testing. Given the large number of drivers, we opted to run half-stints of 5.5 km instead of the full 11 km. With a track length of 396 m, this corresponded to 14 laps per driver. These runs gave us the opportunity to evaluate each driver’s consistency over multiple laps and provided insight into how they might handle the endurance event at competition, both physically and mentally.
During the endurance runs, we gathered some excellent data, primarily focusing on lap times, energy usage with and without regenerative braking, as well as brake, throttle, and steering aggression, yaw rates, and the driver’s physical condition after their runs. Our experienced drivers performed exceptionally well, while our newer drivers showed strong potential, with some demonstrating the ability to become competition drivers. Both of our new drivers also performed admirably.
It was a very valuable track day, as we were able to collect useful data for the Race Engineering team to evaluate further. We look forward to the next track day to continue developing our potential competition drivers.
