This year it was my privilege to serve as one of the design judges at the California competition.
I did not have the opportunity to participate in FSAE in college but I do have the experience of designing, building and testing a complete car from scratch so I can closely relate to the many challenges faced by the teams.  Having now been a part of the judging process and having talked to and evaluated a number of teams I thought it might be helpful to provide some general feedback and input regarding the design portion of the competition, from my perspective, to all FSAE competitors.

It seems quite a few teams believe that showing up with a car which conforms to the rules and has some technically interesting bits and pieces is enough.  While that of course is a prerequisite, it is important to keep in mind that what you bring to the competition is not only the car but the entire team, the depth of team members' understanding of the design issues and process and the clarity of the design goals.  The car is a measure of how successful and consistent your design effort is at achieving those goals.

What you will see repeated several times in the following paragraphs is design justification.  The ability to show why and how a particular choice is made is very important both in the presentation and in creating a better car in the first place.

Based on what I saw in California, below are some of the key areas that I would advise each team to consider as you design and build your car and prepare for competition.