Team Details

We are the TU Graz Racing Team from Austria and are participating for the 15th consecutive time at FSG with our this years car, called Fiona. Coming into second place for the last two years made us more hungry than ever for a victory at FSG! To achieve this goal, we redesigned our whole car and are now looking forward to compete with the best in the world. Being a team with very young team members, we allways try to implement this young spirit into our TANKIA. Come and visit us at our pit!

With the TANKIA 2018, the TU Graz Racing Team is competing with its 15th Combustion Car in the Team History. Every Year we try to further improve our car to reach a new level. With our 2018 contender we further improved on our single-cylinder concept by making TANKIA 2018 lighter, stronger and more reliable. At the same time we added new features to further push the boundaries and build an even better car.You are invited to visit us at our pit at any time. ;)

TU Graz Racing Team is a team that is rich in tradition. Every year, we build on the excellent cars from the past and try to continuously improve. This year, like every year we are trying to build a car that maintains or exceeds the performance compared to past cars. We try to meet the challenges of a Formula Student season by clearly dividing the upcoming work into 7 different modules. The heads of the respective modules act as connectors and coordinators.

TU Graz Racing Team is a team that is rich in tradition. Every year, we build on the excellent cars from the past and try to continuously improve. This year, like every year we are trying to build a car that maintains or exceeds the performance compared to past cars. We try to meet the challenges of a Formula Student season by clearly dividing the upcoming work into 7 different modules. The heads of the respective modules act as connectors and coordinators.

TU Graz Racing Team is a team that is rich in tradition. Every year, we build on the excellent cars from the past and try to continuously improve.This year, one of the biggest challenges has been to comply with the new rules all while trying maintain or exceed performance compared to past years. We try to meet the challenges of a Formula Student season by clearly dividing the upcoming work into 5 different modules. The heads of the respective modules act as connectors and coordinators.

The TU Graz Racing Team started their year with the organizing of a new arrangement for their module captains as well as finding new members. Once this had been decided, the design of their newest TANKIA could begin! Their focus this year, once again, is lightweight design. Their newest features are the drag-reduction-system, an additional injector, as well as a completely redesigned aero-package. They have also implemented some of their old parts, such as the single-piece carbon-fibre moncoque.

This year, the TUG Racing Team started with high hopes and expectations. We started off with the celebrations for 10 years of TUG Racing Team, driving and comparing all the cars we have built in our longtime history. Then, when designing the new car, we took all those information we gathered in those 10 years to build and optimize the new car, the TANKIA 2013. This season, we again concentrated on lightweight design. This resulted in a lot of newly designed parts for our car. The newest TANKIA features 10’’ carbon rims, each weighing less than 800 grams and the one piece monocoque. Also we implemented some of our old parts again, such as the titanium uprights and the multifunctional steering wheel. Livetelemetry and reliability were the main focus for our electronics team. The powertrain focused on improving and testing the 1-cylinder KTM engine we already used in last year’s car.

The TANKIA2012 is the most revolutionary development in the history of the TUG-Racing team. In recent years, we used an engine that was amongst the most powerful on the track. This year, we made a turn regarding this concept. The focus is now on lightweight and agility rather than merely power. The chassis has become slimmer, the tyres smaller and we shortened the track as well as the wheelbase. And we even went one step further: we switched the engine from a heavy 4-cylinder to a single-cylinder KTM. As a result of our changes, we estimate a much better fuel consumption and more agility. These improvements will provide the driver with enough confidence to stick it into the bends and prove our point. Our car comes with a carbon fiber monocoque and a carbon fiber space frame rear end, which is stiffer and makes it possible to remove the engine very quickly. The self-developed multifunctional steering wheel enables the driver to adjust vehicle parameters easily during the race.

Regarding the potential of our last year’s car, we decided to make the Tankia 2011 an evolution of its precursor. Behind his aggressive but also elegant appearance the Tankia 2011 is hiding a lot of highly sophisticated technical solutions. With a weight of less than 190 kg and an engine which produces 76 hp it has an outstanding power to weight ratio. It comes up with a carbon fiber monocoque and a completely new designed carbon fiber space frame rear end, which is stiffer and makes it possible to remove the engine very quickly. Other highlights of the Tankia 2011 are the one-piece carbon fiber rims, hollow titanium uprights made by EBM technology, variable intake tube lengths, self-developed multifunctional steering wheel, which gives the driver the chance to adjust brake balance and other things during driving. Our Team consists of 39 ambitious members and is divided into four technical (chassis, electronics, powertrain, suspension) and two non-technical departments.

We mainly focus on designing and building a lightweight, powerful, innovative and aesthetic car, which is competitive in every discipline, easy adjustable for changes of driver, track, weather, etc., easy maintainable and safe. Therefore advanced materials such as carbon fibre, titanium, aluminium alloys and high alloyed steels are used for designing and developing the single parts. For getting closer to the limit of the materials, many simulations and calculations as well as physical tests are done. Innovative systems invented by its predecessors where further improved and new solutions where found for better maintainability, easier setup adjustments and ergonomics. Reliability and different setups are the reason for a certain period of testing prior the competitions. The TU Graz Racing Team can look back to 6 years of experience, which mainly influenced the development of our 7th car, the TANKIA 2010 alias "Lucky #7", which will compete in all four European competitions.

This season we built our 6th car, the „Tankia 2009“. We had to handle the biggest chassis changes in the whole FS because of the new rules. Main aspects were “powerful”, “innovative”, “driveability” and “lightweight”.Tankia 2009 is powered by a Yamaha R6 four-cylinder engine with custom intake, cams, head and exhaust which delivers 72,5kW and 71 Nm with smooth, wide-band torque.By using carbon fiber composites and lightweight metals such as Aluminium and Titanium, the weights about 198 kg (ready to race) and is thanks to its 5th generation monocoque structure yet very stiff and sturdy.Using Simulation Software such as OptimumK and VeDyna and lots of acquired data we were able to better adapt the Tankia 2009s suspension to the nature of FSAE tracks.To help the driver as well as the engineers, the car has advanced electronic systems for data acquisition and driver assistance.New features we developed are an anti-blocking-system and a rear-wheel-steering system.

This year, the TU Graz Racing Team is celebrating its 5th year of competing in Formula Student. Once again, 43 team members from different academic fields have come together to turn their vision into reality and design and manufacture a new car: The Tankia (“There Are No Kangaroos In Austria”) 2008. This year, we paid extra attention to the car’s driveability and maintainability. Some of the Tankia 2008’s many highlights are the electro-mechanical clutch, the wishbones, which are made of one single piece of carbon fibre, and the new carbon fibre rim which weights less than 1.1 kg and is more rigid than any rim we have used before To lower the weight we have included the pickup point of the rear tie rod, and replaced the rod ends at the chassis with flex-plates. The flex-plates are not only lighter and maintenance-free, but they also eliminated the play and the friction in the pickup points at the chassis.