Recently in Formula SAE Category

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 Ecole de Technologie Superieure."

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.

S&T's world-ranked Formula SAE team probably has the most grueling competition series of any U.S., or for that matter, foreign team. They are literally racing coast-to-coast for 2009, winning the Virginia warm-up race and taking 6th at the world event in Michigan. They even sandwiched a valuable trip to team sponsor's Goodyear Akron test facility after the grueling northern trip. Their goal was now to win the FSAE season finale near Los Angeles and wrap up the Miners' best season ever. This is not just a case of shifting the well-trained crew from race to race; it is summertime and not every student who worked the previous races is available. Some have summer jobs, a few are taking classes, and others have even graduated so the team isn't playing with a full deck (so to speak) :)

Anyway, after overcoming some highway drama en route (see previous story), S&T Racing started the event in fine style by sailing through tech inspection with no issues, then winning the skid pad event for the first time ever. The skid pad is a very tight figure-eight course run one direction then the other. It is a timed test to determining how fast and effectively a car can make it through the kind of demanding turns drivers will encounter in both the autocross and endurance courses.

While waiting to start the autocross event, team leader Aaron Young called in to say the Miners made the design semifinals for the third time this year, a very consistent showing. As it turns out only two teams (usually it is 4 or 5 crews) made the finals and S&T was unfortunately not in that elite pairing.

By that time perennial racing power Rochester Institute of Technology, which placed very high at the Michigan races, had established themselves as the leader. Going into the all-important endurance race RTI held a 40 point lead over the Miners, with the other 96% of the teams so far behind as to be barely on the radar. There would be no way to tell if an RTI miscue and another miraculous driving effort like we saw from Andrew D'Hooge and D.J. Quint in Michigan last month could rally the Miners to their best-ever racing season.

In what amounted to a two-car race RTI and S&T performed extremely well but in one of those cruel twists of fate a sheared bolt doomed to the Miners to a DNF (did not finish) in the all-important endurance race. The endurance race requires each team to pit their car for a driver change and equalize any advantage one particularly skilled driver might hold, as well as to make sure fresh drivers are on course at all times. When S&T's car
came into the pits all was going well. The driver swap went quickly but just as Rolla tried to pull back onto the course a steering bolt failed and made the car undriveable, eliminating any chance to win the day.

Ironically this may have been the result of the Miners' exceptional performance for 2009. The car was road ready earlier than usual so S&T had time to train to an extraordinary degree, practicing with the car several times a week. It takes a lot of asphalt to practice autocross racing, so Rolla's K-Mart, Lowe's and even the Waynesville High School parking lots became "tracks for a day", except that "tracks for a night" would be more accurate because much of that testing took place around midnight.

It may have been that ambitious testing regimen that led to the car's demise. Per SAE rules these teams build a new car each year and sell, scrap or retire their cars tp training vehicles. In short, the cars have a design life cycle of only one season and S&T's car came up short by maybe 15 minutes. We've reported the Miners "thrashed" their car to a spectacular endurance race finish in Michigan, and that was the norm for S&T Racing this year. They pushed that car to its best through months of practice, training their drivers to razor's edge perfection and setting a new benchmark of team organization and performance. They continued that remarkable pace through at least two trips to professional testing facilities, three major races, and perhaps surprisingly, numerous public relations and recruiting outreach events. All of that work may have edged the flashy car just minutes past its design limit.

And while their official SAE racing season is over, the learning opportunities continue. Most of the team is remaining an extra day in California to take in some seminars to help them now, next season, and throughout their professional careers in years to come.

Now THAT'S an S&T education.

The spring '09 competition season has all but wound down, with only S&T's highly-regarded Formula SAE team still on the road. Literally.

The Miners left early Monday morning for their third top-level race of the year and just as they crossed the California state line the automotive pit crew ran into some trouble on the highway. An out-in-the-middle-of-nowhere-kind-of-highway.

First, they started getting the dreaded "check engine" light, followed by an intermittent light that indicated a battery problem. Then the truck started to slow (did we mention they are pulling a 28-ft racing trailer?) and finally ground to a complete halt on the shoulder about "a hundred miles from nowhere", according to team leader Aaron Young.

The team's best guess was a bad alternator, but they had some extra batteries on hand that they hoped would get them to an auto parts shop. That apparently didn't work so they stole a page from (extremely resourceful secret agent) Angus MacGyver's play book.

We probably wouldn't post any photos even if we had them, but imagine this:

Put the team's generator in the truck bed.
Run a 110v extension cord toward the front of the truck.
Plug in a battery charger.
Connect the charger to the battery.
Start the truck.
Drive all the way to the race track at Fontana, California.
Check into the hotel.
Go find an auto parts store and buy an alternator.

Is this the world's first one-ton Ford hybrid diesel pick-up truck?

If they can handle this situation with such panache then handling any track-side breakdowns won't even justify a second glance.

More reports from Cali as the week goes on.

By this time tonight the Formula Miners have made it back to Rolla, unpacked and stowed their gear, started laundry, and are getting some much-needed rest.
S&T Racing put on a tremendous show at the Michigan International Speedway, "thrashing" the #8 car around the endurance race course according to one blown-away observer. That race fan couldn't get over what a great car the this team had put together because the car appeared to come through all that abuse in fine shape, and with a little work will be ready for next month's FSAE wrap-up event in California. The Miners just missed rallying to third place in the final standings, which after D. J. Quint's tremendous driving performance was a very real possibility.
Based on the raw scores S&T would have claimed 4th place, besting last year's standings by four places, and matching the team's all-time high-water mark set in 2004. Unfortunately, they were assessed a last-minute penalty for an inadvertent rules violation that bounced the Miners back two places, finishing 6th out of about 105 teams. Team Leader Aaron Young tells us "there was a communication mix-up at the start of the endurance race, and we ran out of the proscribed race order". Aaron went on to to describe some chaos among the half-dozen or so teams at the race start, but he said the "fault was ours" and he didn't have any gripe with race officials. It may well have been in the rush to change to racing "slicks" while #8 was just minutes before hitting the track that the four-man support crew (the maximum allowed in the "hot" pits) might have been distracted and lost focus.
The two-minute penalty, a huge fine in a 22km race, had nothing to do with the car's on-track performance, and running out of order didn't give the Miners an advantage; if anything it meant that the track was even more damp (and risky) when they raced.
Other cars were moving around them at the time, but Aaron wasn't having anything to do with excuses. He said that at least they topped last year's break-out performance by two places, and now they have to focus on June's season-ending race in California.
The crew felt pretty low after their racing tour de force, because they were dropped two slots on an administrative ruling, not because of racing or design performance. But that belies the real purpose of the event. As an SAE officlal told the team early this year, Formula SAE is not really about building race cars (yeah, that does seem blasphemous). This veteran judge said the real purpose is to master project and system management, and that includes every aspect of the team's actions. On-site judges might seem extremely picky about applying the rules, and while a team may feel slighted on occasion the educational purpose of these programs is to teach attention to detail, so to overlook a rule violation, however inadvertent or harmless to other teams, would not be proper. That lesson will certainly hit home and you can bet that no Miner SAE team will ever let that happen again.

Despite the setback, S&T Racing is in a great position to wrap up the year in an even better position than last year's ninth-place world ranking. They won the VIR FSAE event and will be an odds-on favorite to be on the podium in California next month.

Lastly, if you think the crew had an "Oh S***!" moment when they heard the penalty news,think of this University of Florida driver who looked over his shoulder and saw S&T's intimidating #8 about to crawl up his tailpipe.

We reported earlier that the Miners have scored consistently high in all of their various static and dynamic events, but that those scores were unofficial. Except for yesterday's autocross race all of the reported scores seem to have held up. This afternoon we saw that S&T took eighth place in the autocross, not the third place we thought, and earned roughly 115 out of the event's 150 possible points. It still looks like we were in 5th place going into today's critical (and exciting) endurance race so the overall picture, as well as the importance of the team's amazing performance in the endurance race.

We won't know any the final standings for a few more hours, when the awards are presented at 8:00 p.m. eastern time. Stay tuned!

This is a HUGE upset in the making, and D.J. Quint's face tells it all! The Miners appear to have clawed their way back to a possible podium finish. Race officials moved up the top-tier heats of the crucial endurance race, and the first run group had a pretty wet track 'cause it was still spitting rain when the pole sitters went out. Most teams, including the two schools from Graz, Austria, had to run rain tires to get any hope of traction. TU Graz set a stiff pace for the conditions, but perennial powerhouse Rochester Institute of Technology, then in 2nd place, was running blistering times several seconds faster than even Graz. They were blowing the doors off the other fast teams posting lap times of 65 to 66 seconds.
S&T was in the second group and also mounted rain tires for the officially "damp" conditions, but with the sun beginning to clear Eric Borcherding made the last-second decision to change to slicks, and it paid off big time. When we say "last-second" we mean it. The #8 car was already lined up to go on the track, and when the wheels were swapped out S&T had only two minutes before they were given the green flag!

Andrew D'Hooge started the rally by clocking runs much faster than Graz' and quicker even than RIT's slower driver.

D.J. Quint took over at the mid-way point and blew the doors off of anything in his sights. Our unofficial timer had S&T clocking times as low as 65.2 seconds, with RIT 1/2 to a full second slower. He ran a sparkling race that had the crowd mesmerized, and earned that huge smile. We'll see if Andrew and D.J. managed to pull us to 3rd place. If they did, it will best S&T's best-ever showing at Michigan when the Chris Ford-led team took 4th place in 2004.
Cones will figure big time in this race. RIT hit some and so did the Miners, so RIT and S&T are neck-and neck for the top-rated U.S. team at the event. Penn State and its sub-300-pound car was also in the top five going into the endurance race, but inexplicably didn't show for the finals.

Scoring will be out later today, probably too late to post here before we clear the site and head for the airport. Regardless the Miners really wowed them in Michigan this week!

Some quick FSAE updates: The SAE endurance race has just about wrapped up the morning's heats and most teams are shutting down for lunch. The slower teams started with a "damp" track and were running fairly well until a strong rain shower swept over the track, causing the teams that gambled on dry tires to get a little, uh, loose in the corners.

As we speak the rain is back, and that will make the leaders' group endurance run a pretty interesting affair. If the rain continues it could work to the Miners' advantage because their aero package creates a lot of down force that could give them an advantage under slippery conditions. We've already said that TU Graz has a big lead in the event and barring a major mishap could take the title. There is a lot of jockeying for the runner-up position, and while S&T is holding in 5th place an evaluation of teams #2 through #4 suggests that the Miners have a fair chance at clawing their way up to 3rd place, which would be their highest finish ever at the Michigan event.

Most teams consider the day a success when they complete the endurance race intact. This race is designed to certify that your school's prototype is a proven item and could be ready for market.

In the meantime here are a few shots from this morning's events:

Lastly, we mentioned that some cars plowed through a lot of cones. Here's one that used a cone to push excess water from the track:

FSAE scoring, always a bit of a guess until the final results are posted, appears to have Missouri S&T in 5th place overall and that is the assumption that is driving the Miners' strategy today. The endurance races started about 20 minutes ago and the official description of the course is "damp". Slower teams will run throughout the morning and the top four teams in design (which the Miners just missed) will run head-to-head right after lunch, followed by the Miners' run group at 2:00 p.m. The Rolla team had a superb score in yesterday's autocross but the officials assessed some penalty time for nicking cones along the way. The autocross course is run on the MIS back straight-away so the cars sometimes are too far away from the crowd to see if cones have been hit or a driver has even missed a turn and run off course. A couple of cars didn't let a few little cones impede their momentum and simply ran over over the little critters, even to the point of dragging a cone all the way around the course. Not only did they suffer penalty points but it doesn't take an engineer to figure out the friction coefficient of shoving a cone hundreds of yards along the asphalt.

Race officials set up run groups cars of similar overall scores to keep slower cars from impeding the higher-performing speedsters. This morning a few cars may be running rain tires, and while rain still threatens (and in fact it is drizzling right now) we think the wind and tire heat will have the track dry for S&T's afternoon run. The endurance race is 22km long and each team must change drivers once during their track time so a well-rehearsed pit crew is an absolute requirement. Each endurance car starts at one-minute intervals, sent off by the green-flag guy, similar to Thursday's acceleration lanes at left.

This morning's M*A*S*H* 4077th P.A. update has a Florida team asking for a loan of sunshine and warmer temperatures. They probably won't push their luck and ask for sand and a beach chair, we'd bet.

Today (Friday) was the first day of dynamic events at the biggest SAE event of the year. All teams were fine-tuning their race cars for the skid pad, acceleration and autocross events while simultaneously looking over their shoulders at their teammates and asking "How'd we do in Design? Cost? Presentation?" Here Josh Noll is helping Eric Borcherding adjust the rear wing for reduced drag just prior to the acceleration test; they later returned the slat to its original position for maximum downforce needed in the autocross. At the same time other pit crew members were under the car setting up the chassis.
Back to the static (non-driving) events, they form the foundation of each team's overall score. A well-managed team will develop a strategy of consistent performance throughout each technological task associated with the competition, because simply winning the endurance race and maybe autocross won't necessarily get you enough points to claim overall victory.
So far the Miners are just doing that. In the static events they just missed making the design finals, earning 115 points and 5th place overall, just one slot shy of the final four teams in that category, their best showing in a long time. S&T took 16th in presentation earning good points in the process, and 17th in cost, only 12 points (out of 100) behind the top-scoring team. Their dynamic results include 20th in acceleration with 52+ points, and 23rd in the skid pad challenge. A look at the score sheets indicates that while the Miners may be topped by some teams, few crews have scored as consistently high across the judging spectrum, and that is good for S&T. These standings are unofficial, they tell us, but short of a major controversy we don't expect them to change.
Today's most exciting event was the autocross where drivers try to go as fast as they can through a meandering course lined with orange cones. Run over a cone and get a two-second penalty, which for the top cars (including S&T) amounts to about a 5% fine for each cone struck
The excitement factor was not limited to just the races. A steady rain was forecast for the autocross hours so all eyes remained on the sky, which kept turning different shades of dark grey all afternoon. The Miners waited to run as late as possible in hopes of getting a clean, warm track on which they'd have a speed advantage but the risk was if they waited too long they'd have to come off the line and switch to rain tires. But the gamble paid off. Just as raindrops began to fall #8 blazed to a time of 44.15 seconds (if memory serves) and earned S&T a 3rd place in an event marked by only hundreds of a second between the top teams. After several autocross victories in recent SAE events the Miners were disappointed, but as one long-time S&T supporter said "I never thought I'd see the day when an S&T team is bummed out about a 3rd-place finish in autocross".
Just as S&T ran its last autocross sprint the clouds opened up and the track got real interesting as cars still using dry-pavement tires began to lose their "grip". One car spun out in the last turn and ran off the course just feet from the checkered flag, wasting a fine run. The remaining teams, who quickly switched to rain tires, began to post significantly slower times in the wet.
Looking at tomorrow's critical endurance race vis-a-vis the weather the Miners also switched to rain tires, not to run again but to "break in" the racing shoes on a practice lot just in case they have to run wet in the morning.
Doing his best to create rooster tails of water behind the tires, the Miner driver pushed the car hard through row after row of cones and spun several times trying to get the rain tires ready for possible service. They'll need to run a perfect endurance race (well within their skill set) to stay in the top three tomorrow. Perennial international power, and probable FSAE event leader and low-slung Graz* (Austria) University of Technology (right) holds most of the category titles, having won presentation, design, skid pad, and acceleration (they have a VERY light car) so far. They did score poorly in cost, and took a 35-point penalty because their car was built before the rules and the couldn't handle a specific cockpit template.

Now back to the efforts to set up a car's suspension for specific events..........
To properly set up a car it must be weighed down with a driver; "loaded" so to speak. In this case Josh Noll again proves his value to the S&T race force. Josh is one of the team's top drivers and he did a great job of sitting quietly in the driver's seat while his crew set shocks and camber for the autocross. Josh knows how important this task is so he gave it his full attention as we are sure you'll note.

*Lastly, you'll need an update on the P.A. announcement de jour, so here it the leading contender for the M*A*S*H* 4077th award for the best announcement of the event:

"Attention in the paddock, attention in the paddock! The Graz University of Technology (TU Graz) wishes to announce that there are no kangaroos in Austria".

Silly as you might think, we saw one student completely flummoxed by the announcement for a good ten seconds before it finally dawned on him, and he gave a sheepish look of "oh, yeah, I get it now".

The runner-up for P.A. announcement of the day was an team looking for a "metric crescent wrench".

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.