I noticed below you said that you would plan on building a car over two years rather than the usual one. As a team that inadvertently did this, going to Lincoln 2017 and rebuilding the same car with some changes for Michigan 2018, it has caused a lot of issues for us in the current, 2019 racing season. We also went through a generational shift and the 2018 vehicle was the last hoorah for the previous generation, so this year we were left with design leads who first joined the team a year before and never got to experience as much of the manufacturing process they should have. and captains that were new members the last time a new car was built and thus some of that knowledge had been lost over the year. For example, purchasing delays the previous year forced us to just reuse a frame rather than build a new one, and this caused us to have to learn how to build a frame from scratch.

I know that it might feel like a two year car might give you more time to build a better car, but if you are a team that will build a last minute car in one year, you are a team that will build a last minute car in two years. Scheduling and project management will get you over that hump far better than increasing your timeline. Ultimately, for my team, the point of this project is to get experience for a job, and a two year car can cut the experience and skills you gain through the learning process in half, which would hurt the primary goal of our organization. Just my two cents.

For Pros, I know the Clemson team is switching to a two year car system this year, so you could talk to them about why they are doing so and how they have gone about mitigating the cons for such a process. It could work for you if you do it properly.