If you think that design team competitions normally wrap up in the spring semester, think again.
The Missouri S&T Formula SAE team races year-round to refine their designs and train student drivers to very high skill levels The Miners just completed a three-day out-and-back trip to Toronto (that's Canada to fans of the Big 12 South) and the UofT's Shootout, a pure driving event entirely devoid of nosey tech inspectors looking for reasons to keep a car off the track. It's simply a one-day, adrenaline-fueled track event to which only the top twenty North American teams are invited, and it's no surprise that S&T has been in this event several years in a row.
Acting team leader Adam Hardin summed it up best when he said "We have returned from Toronto, unfortunately without a new set of tires*, but overall it was a good event. 19 total teams showed up out of 20 registered, and the event ran nearly all day before it started raining. The teams combined to run 400 total laps, and the fastest times were right around 1 minute."
Adam goes on to say "based on the times that we were taking, we were fairly confident that we had 1st wrapped up. However, when the final results came out, there were some cone penalties applied to our fastest laps that dropped us from ~2 seconds ahead to 0.3 seconds behind École de Technologie Supérieure."
In short, S&T ended up just 3/10ths of a second out first place, but they did beat powerful RIT, the team that the Miners ran neck-and-neck with at FSAE California and who edged out S&T in Michigan. Cornell, the winningest team in FSAE history, came in 4th overall.
In addition to the team's 2nd place overall finish, Alec Surratt and Zach Lagrone both won individual awards, Alec for 2nd fastest individual lap, and Zach for 4th fastest, all of this in a nearly one-year-old car.
This car will remain a driver training vehicle while the next winged beauty is built for next spring's racing season.
* The top team gets a check and a new set of Goodyear tracing tires. 2nd place get an identical check but no tires. We're pretty sure that S&T has already worn out the tires they won at last year's Shootout.
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