Fresh from their 1st-ever first-place title at last month's SAE East Coast automotive competition, the Miners are looking pretty good at the REALLY BIG FSAE event at Michigan International Speedway. There are teams here from Europe, Canada, Korea, South America, and all over the lower 48 competing in what must be the world's toughest SAE racing event.
There are no official scores to report yet but late today S&T's world-ranked racing team passed the first big hurdle when they made it into the design semifinals for the first time in five years. Design, for those who haven't been at these events,
means a bunch of grizzled (and we mean that with the greatest respect!) automotive experts descend on your car (and your team) to make you justify every little detail of the car. It's an intense 15-minute grilling by people who REALLY know their stuff and they challenge you to see if YOU know your stuff as well. Design counts for 150 points out of 1000, so it's very hard to earn a podium medal if you don't get past the first round of design. Twelve teams, maybe 10-15% of the schools on hand, made it to the semi-finals and we'll know early tomorrow if the Miners make it to the finals.
During the first design evaluation the judges found a problem with the accelerator cable and brought it to the team's attention, and even withdrew S&T's tech completion label. It turned out that in the rush to make sure every nut and bolt was secure someone had tightened a bolt that was supposed to be loose. That was quickly rectified and the essential tech sticker was back on the car in no time. During the tech semi-finals the judges seemed to count as a plus that the "fix" was very miner, er, minor.
In other areas, despite the fact that scores won't go up for another twelve hours, we think they did quite well in the Sales presentation, and in the Cost evaluation one judge commented that S&T's #8 car was the best he seen so far, with about half the fleet yet to be evaluated at that point.
Now, about that t-shirt................
At each SAE event the sponsors provide each team member with a nice t-shirt to remember the day. Imagine if you were one of the nearly 100 teams on hand who had the privilege of wearing THIS striking example of technological creativity on your back?
Yup, S&T's '08 car, minus the name. is pictured on the back of the official FSAE t-shirt, and we'd bet that's gotta make most of the other teams feel a little insecure. Sorry, guys! But to rub it in a little deeper the FSAE folks also used another dramatic photo of S&T's '08 car for a major advertising poster to drum up interest in the FSAE race series. Apparently the FSAE folks think it is the coolest looking 4-wheeler that they have seen in years, and who are we to disagree? After all, here is the latest version of this screamingly fast work of design art, and it matches almost exactly with the back of the shirt.
From another perspective this event is a lot of fun, but because it is an intense learning environment it it attracts the top schools from all over the world. There were even a few Ivy League schools, At first we didn't catch this school's name, but we knew it was Ivy League all the way. How did we know?
Simple. From the fuzzy dice flying from the roll bar.
Lastly, throughout the day the FSAE folks broadcast over the P.A. system appeals from teams needing certain specific tools, parts, or materiel. At the end of the day one such call came as follows:
"Attention in the paddock: The Air Force Academy, located in pit area ___, needs
(now get ready for this..........)
The Air Force Academy need to know where the nearest GOLF COURSE is."
Folks, we can't make this stuff up.
BTW, the Naval Academy's car looks kinda like a boat. We didn't say that, a judge did.
Good night.
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