Formula Student season 2024
/// Summarising an entire Formula Student season in a handful of passages is like trying to build a Formula Student car–you know it is possible somehow, but you don't know where to start. Nevertheless, every year your own ambitions plunge you back into the madness that is ‘motorsport’. Driven by your own aspirations to make it a little better every time, to get the car a little faster every time and to stretch a little closer to the ceiling every time.
The 2023/24 season got off to an unusual start for our team. In addition to our goals on track, we are striving to represent our sponsors in the best possible way with a professional public image and to create the attention of an ever-growing circle of interested parties to our project. Thus, for the first time, RUB Motorsport was able to present several of its vehicles and the Formula Student competition to an international audience at two major fairs.
The team was represented at the Professional MotorSport World Expo 2023 in Cologne and the Essen Motor Show, winning the "Innovation Award" at the EMS. In what has now grown to a proper partnership, a year later RUB Motorsport again had a booth at the 2024 EMS.
Far away from astonished eyes in exhibition halls, the task was to work out a competitive overall concept with which the team would contest the three race weeks in Austria, Germany and Croatia. True to the motto of not reinventing the wheel every year, the previous season's existing model was developed further in order to achieve greater reliability while having a consistently higher power output.
Nevertheless, with RUB24, the third vehicle in the history of our club to be powered by an electric drive, we dared to take big, rather than cautious, evolutionary steps in several areas. Among other things, the car had a battery container made of aramid, rather than aluminium. The new model brought a weight saving of around 50 % compared to its predecessor. Parts of the aerodynamics at the front of the vehicle were redesigned and the steering system overhauled. In addition, large parts of the electronics differed from the previous year's model. New manufacturing and fastening concepts had been developed to improve cooling, performance and maintenance.
The biggest technical change to the RUB24, a completely new spring-damper system, was the result of a unique co-operation for RUB Motorsport: the team had been working with thyssenkrupp BILSTEIN since the start of the season. Thanks to this partnership, it can draw on technology from professional formula racing and has the opportunity to test its own car on the 7-post test rig in Meuspath at the Nürburgring to check, tune and validate data.
Starting with Formula Student Austria at the Red Bull Ring, the RUB24 took part in three race weeks spread over July and August. In Spielberg, Hockenheim and on the Bugatti Rimac Test Track, it was able to set several internal club records and best times. The car stood on the starting line in 16 out of 16 possible dynamic disciplines, scored the most points since 2021, drove the most competitive kilometres in six years, delivered more power than any other RUB Motorsport vehicle before and achieved the fastest acceleration time since the team was founded.
With drastically improved reliability, weight-optimised design, innovations and high manufacturing quality, RUB24 is one of the most successful cars to come out of our workshop. Although we are never completely satisfied with our own results and always have an eye on what needs to be improved, we have succeeded in setting new standards in 2024. The performance of our car is the result of unique teamwork and spirit.
RUB Motorsport – that is pure racing. No glitz. No glamour. But instead with a lot of passion.
