VIRTUAL FORMULA 2009

Prof Gabriele Fichera, faculty advisor of Sicily Team Motorsport and teacher of Vehicle Dynamics, said:

“VI-grade Virtual Formula is a powerful educational tool to increase knowledge of our students in vehicle dynamics, giving them the possibility to quickly estimate the effects of such vehicle set-up parameters (related to suspensions, body, brakes, etc.) on car performance and lap time, and better understand the sensitivity of parameter variation with respect to the final goal (best lap-time).”

In a strong competition against 17 other teams from all over the world the Sicily Team Motorsport from the University Catania, Sicily (Italy) has won the championship. Below is a listing of the top 6 ranking teams that have received no penalty and have fully complied with the rules and regulations of the competition.

 

Position	Team	University	Lap Time	Penalty
1	Sicily Team Motorsport	Università degli Studi di Catania	51:30	0
2	MDRG Racing	Uni Padova	51:63	0
3	Sophia Racing	Sophia University Tokyo	52:39	0
4	Dynamics Polimi Reparto Corse	Politecnico di Milano	52:93	0
5	Squadra Corse	Politecnico di Torino	53:60	0
6	Pomos Reparto Corse, La Sapienza	Universita di Roma, La Sapienza	54:79	0

Luca Fisichella, 3rd year mechanical engineering student, driver and multibody model developer, said: “The participation of our team to the VI-grade Virtual Formula competition was a stimulating experience that helped us to improve the design process of our car, assessing values of variables that were still uncertain in the early design stage. This study will give us the opportunity to realize a better real car and optimize cost allocation to develop those subsystems and parameters having the strongest influence on track lap-time.”