“In the (main) piloted category, we moved up from 17th to 12th place in the rankings. In the autonomous category, our team moved up from 8th to 7th place,” said Bc. Marko Matoničkin, head of the autonomous section of EFORCE and team spokesperson. The world rankings are currently led by a student team from ETH Zurich, with silver going to UAS Graz and bronze to the team from Politecnico di Milano (PT Milano).
How is the evaluation carried out? “Since each competition is independent, the procedure is such that the evaluators ‘take’ all the participating teams and look at what results these teams achieved in the last season and during the previous few seasons. Older successes have less weight. Based on all the knowledge gained, the evaluators then calculate the competitiveness of the individual races,” described Marko Matoničkin. “So the better the teams that compete in a given race, the more competitive it is and the more weight it has for the final scoring. For example, the German races had a competitiveness of 96 out of 100, because all the very good teams gathered there. For comparison, the Italian ones have a value of 88, because two or three really good teams arrived there,” explained Matoničkin, who is studying the Cybernetics and Robotics program at the FEL.
The team spokesperson stated that EFORCE’s significant progress this year was helped by both last year’s third place in the autonomous category at Formula Student Germany, the most prestigious student race in Europe, and the extremely successful 2024 season. At that time, the team with the CTU.24 formula won the unmanned category in the Formula SAE Italy competition and silver in the static discipline of the Engineering Design Event. Other successes at that time were, for example, third place in the piloted category of Formula Student Germany and victory in the autonomous category at the domestic FS Czech competition in Most.
A high ranking in the world rankings is great for promoting the team and establishing new contacts and collaborations. “We are becoming known to German companies. And thanks to that, for example, we were now able to test the formula in Helsing, Germany,” pointed out Matoničkin. Helsing is a technology company focused on software development and artificial intelligence. “Our success in the rankings is a signal to these companies that with everything we know and can do, we can compete with the best teams – even though we have a smaller budget,” stated Marko Matoničkin.
What is coming up?
The EFORCE Prague Formula team will go on a total of four races around Europe this year. It will start the season at the polygon in Most from July 19 to 24 in the Formula Student Czech Republic competition. Then EFORCE will have a road trip around Europe in the form of two races in different countries right behind each other. The first is Formula Student Spain at the renowned Circuit de Barcelona – Catalunia from August 1 to 7. This is followed by the legendary Formula Student Germany race at the Hockenheimring, which will take place between August 11 and 16. This year's season will be closed by the Italian Formula Student ATA race at the Riccardo Palleti circuit near the town of Varano de Melegari, between September 2 and 6.