下面就是我寫的原文了：

Welcome

Okay, Welcome to my world. Here, in the later chapter, I would talk about each of aero component, knowledge and how it works. I guarantee you would learn a lot since I put all of my knowledge into this design document. If you still don』t know what is CL or CD or how to calculate downforce or drag with given parameters, I would strongly suggest that you open the textbook we have in our library—Race Car Aerodynamics. In that book, you would learn basics and you won』t forget most of it after tomorrow or next week. Read one book is not enough to get you started and prepared for the competition you are going to, because there are so many things you need to learn. Don』t panic and take it slow. Now, I am going to give my advices to you and teach you how to start it, making sure you have enough knowledge and capabilities to make your own decisions and build a great car. Wish you have a great season.

Things about me

By the time you are reading this terrible prologue composed by my Chinese-style English, I want to tell you that I am a sophomore when I am writing this and I came to US with a student visa for a year. The language barrier still somehow exists, but my English is good enough for me to communicate fluently. 2018-2019 is the 1st year that I am in charge of aerodynamic design after I finish my freshman year, and, of course, I didn』t take fluid and aero class in my freshman year. Lots of new guys and friends are surprised about what I achieve and ask about how I started. The short answer I always use is DILIGENT. The long answer is reading Race Car Aerodynamics and Tune to win, learning how to use CFD and doing a bunch of brainstorming and simulation to accumulate your knowledge, plus a bunch of aero and vehicle dynamics materials. It is lots of work you need to put into, and it wasn』t an unpleasant experience for me when I am doing it. Here, I think I have a better idea about how to get you started. It is one of the reasons why I write this prologue.

Attitude & lifestyle

Back in the old days when I was a karate student, the motto of karate in my dojo is attitude goes first, then goes the fist. It is the same thing for formula Student. No one comes here with decent amount of knowledge at the beginning. We are all the same. After seeing so many people come and go in the team, I know that it is all about your action, your attitude and your motivation to learn new things. These three things determine how fast you would learn and how much you would learn, which is why I always appreciate new people with great motivation and passion. Having a passion of doing thing will bring you far. Working in a formula student team or a proper racing team would also change your life dramatically. One of my friends who is a very passionate racing engineer once told me that 「Motorsport is a culture, a lifestyle, it is an environment in its own right and you have to be in it to really know if you like it or not. It is about hard work in an environment that is alien to a lot of other industries, education and people. It is never easy」. Finding things that you really love would gradually change your life style, no matter how hard it is, and it will help you become more persistent in the future. In my perspective, aero has literally no rules and lots of freedom to be creative, and you always need to do something new to try and improve to beat other teams. It is lots of work for sure when it comes to something that has literally no restrictions, but I get a huge sense of satisfaction and pride when I see the aero on the car which I designed, it is extremely rewarding.

Project management

Before you decide exactly what sort of car/aero package you intend, start by planning the available time. This exercise should determine what type of car and what level of complexity you decide to design and make.

Working backwards from the date of its first intended competition, the car will need to be tested and developed well in advance of the competition so that you have time to do the important developments, testing and driver training. Top teams who expect to win budget for 3 months of testing at weekends and a few days in the week, getting a well sorted car. This gives them enough reliability to finish endurance and help them to get into the top 25.

The teams that are doing their final assembly the night before the competition are virtually doomed at mechanical failure and significant less optimum performance. So, it is vital to shakedown the car to discover and hopefully eliminate most of the failures and problems and then test to optimize the car and train the driver.

It doesn』t matter how complex the design and how brilliantly you have worked to fabricate it—if it is not ready enough early to test it, then it is a poor design. You need to decide what you are going to try to achieve. Win the competition? Or something else.

「1. To finish first, you must first finish. Think reliability before you think performance. 2. Accuracy, relevance, usefulness, meaningfulness, repeatability are five words that should be part of your everyday engineering vocabulary. 3. In terms of project management, you must think about your race car concept, simulation, drawing, machining, and assembly as an plane that must land. If you keep flying your plane and run out of fuel, you crash. Similarly, a fantastic car design that is not finished on time won』t help you. There must either be a dictator or a common agreement to have each car part finished on time. Winning starts at the workshop with on-time and on-target design achievement.」 quoted from 「Formula Student 101」 by Claude Rouelle.

Knowledge

Other than the book I mentioned in the 1st paragraph, there are so many things that you need to learn. Those things other than RCA are going to be put you under the pressure. Teaching you guys individually or together about those things is a rough choice for me to transfer my knowledge to you, but if you do it by following my instruction, it would be much easier to teach yourself systematically. Remember, you need to see the car as a system rather than just aero some parts putting together. YOU HAVE TO KNOW THE RULES, READ THE RULES, THEN START YOUR DESIGN. I would suggest you to read Tune to Win first after you finish RCA. It is a great book to help you establish the fundamental of vehicle dynamics. YOU CAN NOT BE AERO LEAD OR THE DESIGNER OF AERODYNAMIC PACKAGE WITHOUT BAISCS OF VEHICLE DYNAMICS. I did try to keep the vehicle dynamics part as simple as possible in the later document, but If you don』t know what slip angle is or what load transfer is, you should go back to basics. I know a lot of you are busy with your own life, but this is the part that you need to go through just like every suspension lead and chassis lead. I also suggest you to read Optimum G technical papers about shocks and damper to understand how the suspension adjust to aero. Optimum G seminar slides are also a great resource to read. You would probably have more vehicle dynamics knowledge than me after you read the best book we have—Race Car Vehicle Dynamics. In fact, everyone in the team should read Tune to Win and it should be a requirement for every team lead, not just suspension, aero and chassis. If you achieve this goal I gave it to you, you would be one of the smartest persons in the team. IT IS A MISTAKE TO STUDY SUCCESSFUL FSAE CAR BEFORE YOU START YOUR DESIGN PROCESS, BECAUSE IT COULD CRAMP YOUR CREATIVITY. STUDY THE FUNDAMENTAL FIRST.

You have to learn that racing is all about everything working together. Yes, you may need one or two people to pull it all together, but you need everyone to be on the same wavelength and thinking the same way. Otherwise, it would end up like me who designed the aero alone and made design document for 3 months. Pushing your people to learn new stuff is good choice and a bad choice at the same time. A push would be useful for very passionate people, not for the one who is lazy and join the team for his/her resume. On the other hand, you need to know about the suspension and chassis, not just aero, because the suspension is design around aero, and chassis is where the aero end up with. Learning to communicate with them and sharing information all the time are the keys to success, and then you would build a nice car. I did chase chassis lead for a month to get correct chassis dimension, ride height, wheel center, wheel base, track and other parameters, because these are critical parameters for aero design, and it would help me integrate my aero to the chassis and make my aero work.

Homework

Of course, it is not just the aero meeting or talking to the team lead that can offer you knowledge and a thrilling and fulfilling engineering experience. For a proper racing team, the factories of the race teams, suppliers and manufacturers are all hives of activities, filled with engineers who spend their days delving into the finite details of designing, modeling and optimizing complex part. CFD is not only a tool for me to validate my design, it is also a tool for people to learn and improvise. I did lots of simulation in my freshman year with dozens of prototypes I modeled, trying to find the way to design a better aero than last car. Those countless simulations I did eventually turned into the knowledge I had. This help me to combine the theory I learnt from the book to real-life application and gain more knowledge through it, especially, by that time, knowledge transfer doesn』t even exist in the aero team. Luckily, I have always been a stubborn guy who always battles my way out. Eventually, I earn my own lucky strike.

Helping Out

It is not a shameful thing at all to ask a stupid questions, even to other team. Most teams are very open to share information and willing to help you out with their time and experience. Of course, There』s always been a rivalry between each team, but it is on a more positive way. We have the sympathy to know how hard to start from a scratch and how frustrated to figure out something that you don』t understand. We know that refusing sharing information is not the way to maintain their position as a good team in the competition; it is always through hard working. However, don』t expect that they will teach you everything they know or give their aero CAD to you no matter how hard you try. You are the one who design and make the decisions。