UNM Places in Top-10 for Two Events in International Racing Competition

The UNM LOBO­Mo­tor­Sports team placed eighth in design, ninth in autocross, and 12th in mar­ket­ing at the For­mula SAE®, an inter­na­tional com­pe­ti­tion for open wheel, open cock­pit Formula-style race cars held June 15–18, in Fontana, Calif. The com­pe­ti­tion tests research, design, man­u­fac­tur­ing, devel­op­ing, mar­ket­ing, man­age­ment and finances for cars engi­neered to a fic­tional cus­tomer — the week­end racer. Eighty-six teams from all over the world reg­is­tered for the event.

The UNM School of Engi­neer­ing is one of a hand­ful of uni­ver­si­ties to offer the FSAE pro­gram as a cred­ited course; other teams are clubs. In three semes­ters, UNM stu­dents learn com­plex the­ory and analy­sis of dynamic vehi­cle sys­tems and receive hands-on expe­ri­ence in man­u­fac­tur­ing pro­ce­dures and mate­ri­als. To ensure con­ti­nu­ity, the class includes stu­dents from 2011 and 2012, and a mix of 21 stu­dents from both classes went to the competition.

Take a ride with the UNM FSAE Team

“Our eighth place in design, which is pure engi­neer­ing, is huge,” says John Rus­sell, pro­fes­sor of mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing, who teaches the class. “This is real-life engi­neer­ing that tests stu­dents’ depth of knowl­edge and their under­stand­ing of the design they built.”

The design com­po­nent tests problem-solving and crit­i­cal think­ing; stu­dents are asked ques­tions by the judges and they have to explain the choices they made in the design. Autocross involves two dri­vers each dri­ving the course twice, demon­strat­ing the con­sis­tency of the car and the dri­vers’ abil­ity to nav­i­gate a ser­pen­tine course.  The mar­ket­ing pre­sen­ta­tion tests stu­dents’ mar­ket research, risk analy­sis, sales abil­ity, and more.

“We were on our way to a top 10 fin­ish over­all; pos­si­bly top five,” says Rus­sell. Because of a hub fail­ure in the endurance event, the team did not score points, fin­ish­ing 26th place overall.

“This was our first car with func­tional aero­dy­nam­ics — a front wing, rear wing, and dif­fuser under­tray — all designed to pro­duce down­force like For­mula 1 and Indy cars. Plus it was really, really fast! The best teams came over and com­pli­mented us.” To see a video of the car plac­ing ninth in the autocross event, click here.

FSAE is also a test of project man­age­ment skills, team­work, and think­ing on your feet. UNM project man­ager Jaik Ortiz orches­trated 35 stu­dents from the class, han­dled event sched­ul­ing, project man­age­ment, and admin­is­tra­tion. “It’s a lot of fun, a lot of work, and the pay­off is ter­rific,” says Ortiz. “From the 2010 UNM team, three peo­ple were hired in the auto indus­try: one at Chrysler, two at Ford.”

Two UNM FSAE Stu­dent Pro­files

Jaik Ortiz says he has always has been a problem-solver and han­dles stress really well; a great com­bi­na­tion for project man­ager. Ortiz had enrolled in the in the UNM busi­ness school out of high school, but was mak­ing too much money as a mechanic, and con­tin­ued in that field for 7 years. “FSAE is what con­vinced me to go back to school,” he says.

Now he is work­ing at San­dia National Labs and decid­ing between grad school or a job in the auto industry.

Steve Car­pen­ter was the other dri­ver for autocross and endurance. “Steve is a very accom­plished dri­ver,” says Rus­sell. “His dri­ving got us the 9th place in autocross.” Car­pen­ter also filled the crit­i­cal role of sys­tems engineer.

A 2009 MS stu­dent, Chris King, used his MS the­sis to study the con­tin­u­ously vari­able trans­mis­sion. He put together a model, tuned it on a com­puter, then applied it on the track, and con­sid­er­ably improved the per­for­mance of the con­tin­u­ously vari­able transmission.

Zachary Zelle says, “I’ve relied heav­ily on what I learned from the FSAE pro­gram in all three of my suc­cess­ful inter­views (Hon­ey­well, Sandia’s intern pro­gram, and now as a full time tech­ni­cal staff mem­ber at San­dia). Also, with the 2010 team, I now have a sec­ond fam­ily: a good major­ity of us still get together quite often, and we’re all very close.”

Fran­cis St. Pierre is an exchange stu­dent from Ecole De Tech­nolo­gie Superieure in Québec, Canada. He used to race motocross at home and took the FSAE class at UNM as an elec­tive. The team chose him as one of the two dri­vers for the autocross and endurance events. “Fran­cis attacks the course,” says Rus­sell. “He is a very accom­plished driver.”

St. Pierre said the FSAE pro­gram was per­fect for him per­son­ally and academically.

“I couldn’t believe we’d build a car in two semes­ters,” he says. “It’s a great expe­ri­ence for team­work. Also, when I first came to the US, I couldn’t speak Eng­lish very well but peo­ple helped me a lot. And we had fun – when we weren’t work­ing on the car, we went snow­mo­bil­ing, hik­ing and hung out.”