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By Matt Gil
e-mail: Matt.TheDailyFYI@gmail.com
TAMPA–There’s no doubt USF’s football team draws the big crowds and the big coverage on campus. But for mechanical engineering majors, it’s all about the steel-framed, mid-engine project being built behind the Parking Services building that has the pride and reputation of the university riding on it.
Welcome to the USF Racing Team. The race car being built is part of an international competition, called Formula SAE (FSAE), that lets mostly mechanical engineering majors put the rubber on the road, proverbially speaking.
From the University of Kansas to the University of Waikato in New Zealand, teams will descend on competitions sponsored by the Society of Automotive Engineers in Michigan and California to see who built the best open-wheel mini race car.
USF will once again take part in the competition, but this year will be a little different.
For years, USF’s successes have been limited to the team’s other project, Baja SAE, where the team builds a 4-wheeler instead of an open-wheel race car. The Baja car would consistently place near the top of the separate competition, while the Formula car placed near the bottom at the FSAE competition.
This year, there isn’t a Baja car, and the team decided to focus solely on the Formula car.
Simon Restrepo, the President of USF Racing and a mechanical engineering major, said the format for previous years wasn’t right.
“It wasn’t the right way to do it,” Restrepo said. “There was not much engineering going on in the cars, stuff got put together just because we had to.”
Scrapped
Restrepo discovered FSAE when he was touring University of Florida and became hooked.
“I saw a garage door and I saw a race car in there,” he said. “It caught my attention.”
Like other prospective mechanical engineering students, Restrepo made sure that whichever university he wound up at had a Formula SAE team.
Team members Geo Molina and Kiram Rajaram, both mechanical engineering majors, had similar stories.
“A USF tour mentioned the cars, so in the fall [semester] I joined up,” Rajaram said.
Molina didn’t get the word-of-mouth referral, but at an engineering showcase, meant to highlight the college’s finest achievements, he found out about it.
“I was at Engineering Day, I saw the cars, and wanted to be a part of it,” Molina said.
Making the project an attraction for new or visiting students wasn’t easy, though. Restrepo said that, while the team had a good foundation in 2004 and 2005, it took a major corporate shuffle to shake off the bad habits in recent years.
“By December [2009], all we had was a frame,” Restrepo said. “It was December, classes were over…there was no one around.”
Restrepo called a meeting and asked the members of the team if they cared about the project. He became the new President of USF Racing, combined the roles of President and team co-captain, and got to work on the car.
“We actually finished the car with four days to go to the competition,” he said.
That year may have had its reward in getting the car built, but Restrepo was faced with difficulties outside of the team. Restrepo, who had a car accident during that spring semester, admitted that a lack of sleep and distractions from the project took a toll.
“It was also one of the worst semesters of my life,” he said. “I ended up failing three classes…passed the other two barely.”
Restrepo said it was a huge challenge personally and professionally, but it lines up with what happens with the team as well. Even when faced with adversity, something is on the line, and it’s just a matter of getting things done.
Gaining Notoriety
The team might not have the same status as the football team, but the FSAE competition is definitely its own sport, and USF Racing is hoping to improve its image on campus.
“We’re representing the university worldwide,” Restrepo said.
In the past, universities from around the world would send e-mails to the team relating to USF’s Baja success. Teams would pay compliments and ask for help with their own Baja designs. Students, including Restrepo, have also come to USF because of the program.
With social media and increased coverage from places like Race Car Engineering, the FSAE competition, and the teams themselves, are becoming feature points, just like a full-fledged college sports team.
Back at USF, the annual College of Engineering showcase brings the USF Racing team out as well.
“Whenever they have an event, they call us,” Restrepo said. “People go ‘wow,’ students are doing this, building a whole race car that can keep up with supercars like Ferraris…in an autocross, not a straight-line.”
Performance aside, the team is a part of the university, and Restrepo wants students to see the car at places besides the College of Engineering Expo. Restrepo wants to get the team on the commercials during the football game, like Oregon State University, and get more exposure.
Restrepo says students should remember it’s an extracurricular activity, but it’s a mandatory graduation requirement for mechanical engineering students at other schools.
The team provides a real-world experience that, when combined with an internship, will set students up with experience for life, says Restrepo.
Steve Voras, the non-faculty professional advisor for the USF Racing Team, joined the team after a call went out that the team needed an advisor. So far, he has been impressed with what he has seen, but knows the struggles the team faces.
“It’s a really great group of guys, they have some struggles just like any company, like any team, keeping everybody motivated, keeping everybody involved, getting enough people with the right talents, but I think they do really well with what they’ve got,” Voras says.
Even more important is that just being involved with the project, members of the team are going to have an advantage when they enter the workforce.
“It’s giving them a real-world introduction to business and it is going to give them experiences they’re not going to get in school,” Voras says. “It could literally, just from my observation, put them 5 or 10 years ahead of similar graduates if their interest is in getting into the overall management of business.”
Voras says that some members of the team could start up their own business and be successful right from the start.
At the end of the day, when pieces of metal shavings from car parts are lodged into your skin, cuts from a sharp edge of the car’s frame leads to blood and oil stains on your clothes, the project is done, and the experience gained is more than you could ever get in a classroom.
Building Blocks
Restrepo admits that there aren’t any flashy technologies being incorporated into this year’s car, but the team’s restructuring itself is a new adaptation. No longer will the team try to engineer, build, test, and compete with both a Baja and Formula car. That strategy meant only one team would really be successful.
Having a strong foundation is important as well, for the present and the future.
“One of our mistakes was that we were redesigning the car each year,” Restrepo said. “When you have 99 weak points and only one strong point, we would change the entire car instead of trying to reduce [the weak points].”
USF Racing is looking at the logistics to build up the foundation as well. They are documenting what they are doing, what they spend their money on, what parts of their finance record can be improved, and what would make the team function like a company by holding meetings to discuss the project.
“It’s completely different for us,” he said.
Many of the major FSAE teams have moved on to the hybrid FSAE competition, such as University of Kansas, and University of Texas-Arlington, both known for their success in the FSAE competition.
Restrepo admits the team is not ready for that step…yet. Again, it comes back to the foundation of the team.
“We’re still a very young team,” he said. “We’re trying to mature the team and get better.”
If the team can build up experience and a solid foundation, the successes of the Baja SAE team could carry over to the Formula SAE team. Restrepo has ambitious goals for the team as well, calling for a top 50 finish in the Michigan competition in May and a top 30 finish in California later this year. After that, the goal is to improve the team’s ranking each year.
The car may only be in the very beginning of construction, but the ball is rolling. Restrepo says there has been a lot of progress in the last month. As to whether the team will make it to the competition in May, Molina says it will happen.
“We really trust our team leaders, you can see the progress already,” he said.
Admittedly, it’s going to take some long hours and all hands will need to be on deck.
“Everyone’s going to be working on it,” Molina says.
Related Links:
http://www.usforacle.com/2.5741/a-classroom-of-dust-and-dirt-1.620547
