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.”