AMZ Racing: Electric student speedster with an historic season
In brief
- Students of ETH Zurich and the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts have been developing a new and fully electric race car every year since 2010.
- The “mythen” from 2023 reclaimed the world record title for the fastest acceleration from 0 to 100 km/h in an electric car.
- At this year's Formula Student, AMZ Racing exceeded the team’s own expectations claiming more top places than ever before.
Sometimes it is a mere 1.1 seconds that decide whether or not you will go down - or go down in the history books. Students from ETH Zurich and the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts who lead the Academic Motorsports Club Zurich (AMZ) now hold the record for the first double victories in two Formula Student race events. However, the outlook for the 2024 racing season did not start out so bright.
Mid-July in Austria. The electric speedster “dufour” came to a sudden halt in the middle of the racetrack. A glitch with the electrical system in the car caused it to switch off automatically on the track in the first few minutes of the race. If it had not been for that darn fault in the electrical system, the AMZ Racing team and its more than 40-student strong project team might have driven home in first place. But, the rules of the “Formula Student” endurance race are unforgiving allowing for no outside intervention.
Sub-disciplines from chicane driving to business plan
Curdin Deplazes calls the 22 km course the “supreme discipline.” “Apart from the endurance discipline, it was a very successful event in Austria,” says the Chief Operating Officer and Head of Powertrain at AMZ Racing. Deplazes only just completed his bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering at ETH Zurich this summer.
With their skills, the students finally landed in seventh place overall at the end of July at the Austrian Red Bull Ring - with five podium places out of eight sub-disciplines. AMZ Racing even took first place in “Acceleration” - a distance of 75 meters that must be completed as quickly as possible from a standstill.
The ETH Zurich-lead team has been around since 2006 and the students have been working on exclusively electrically powered racing cars since 2010. It is one of many Focus Projects at the university, others include the “Swissloop” transport capsule or the “e-Sling” electric aircraft, in which ETH Zurich students apply their acquired knowledge and improve it - learning by doing.
First double victory with the same vehicle in Formula Student history
One might get the impression that AMZ Racing had a mediocre season after the complete breakdown at the endurance race in Austria, but not this team. At the competition in Valais, Switzerland, shortly before the race in Austria, AMZ Racing stood at the top of the podium leaving 14 other teams well behind in the overall standings.
How Formula Student works
The international design competition “Formula Student” is a prestigious series of events in which hundreds of teams of students from all over the world take part. Unlike a professional racing series such as Formula E, however, the university teams do not have to take part in all 25 or so annual competitions. In addition, since 2022 vehicles can compete both with and without a driver. Cars entered in the Formula Student Driverless Cup operate autonomously. In addition to dynamic disciplines, static disciplines are also assessed in the competitions. These include the team’s business plan or engineering design, for example. It is not just about speed, but about an overall package of up to eleven sub-disciplines, which are scored individually and then added together.
Two weeks later, at the beginning of August: Deplazes and the team want to lay it on the line. As an engineer, Deplazes sees this as “a new challenge.” Normally, student teams prioritize either the hard manual or autonomous driving putting their “eggs all in one basket” so-to-speak into one or the other race disciplines.
AMZ Racing, however, pulled two aces out of its sleeve at the Formula Student in Hungary: in 15 of the 21 disciplines, the team which predominantly consists of students from ETH Zurich took their place on the podium with their car, “dufour” winning both the manual and autonomous driving in the overall rankings.
“This result marks the first double victory for a single car at the same event in the history of Formula Student” says Deplazes, not without pride. He has been with AMZ Racing since 2021.
No one from this year's AMZ team participated in last year's acceleration world record because the team composition is constantly changing as graduates and first-semester students move on in their studies. That is where the ambition comes from.
The win in Hungary really got them going at the German Hockenheim ring.
Thriller at the most prestigious Formula Student race
“It's the biggest Formula Student event in the world and enjoys the highest reputation in the community,” says Deplazes. In Germany, the ETH Zurich team faced fierce competition with other university student teams.
At its home race, the team from Dresden University of Technology narrowly won the first dynamic disciplines with and without a driver. Only in the manual autocross did AMZ Racing come out on top. In the autonomous pendant race, the university team was beaten by just seven hundredths of a second.
Finally, in the Track Drive - the “Endurance race” counterpart with a shortened track for self-driving cars - AMZ pulled off the coup. With a “very narrow lead” of 1.1 seconds, as Deplazes says with relief, they won this sub-discipline with a perfect score of 200 out of 200 points. With a total of nine podiums, manual and autonomous were enough for another double victory and a strong finish to the season.
“All in all, it's probably the most successful season a team has ever had,” says Deplazes. What are his plans for next season? “I'm going to free up space for others and concentrate on my master’s degree in Energy Science. As an alum, I will stay with the team.”
