The Formula SAE competition is an annual competition that began in 1981. It has grown from six schools to over 140 universities participating, with teams from all over the globe. The purpose of the competition is to conceive, design, and build a formula style race car, and then compete against 140 different universities at the competition. In order to give teams the most flexibility in design, rules are kept to a minimum, such as limiting engine size and restrictor diameter. The students are challenged to design a formula style race car to market to the weekend autocross racer. This car and the team then participate in several static and dynamic events at competition. The static events include a design presentation, cost presentation, and a marketing presentation, and the dynamic events include acceleration, skid-pad, autocross, endurance, and fuel economy events. A total of 1000 points is possible, with 350 points coming from the endurance event. Each team is challenged to find the best compromise between performance, cost, design, ease of maintenance and several other factors to develop the best race car possible.

The University of Evansville’s involvement in Formula SAE has been somewhat scattered over the past 12 years. The first year the university went to competition was in 1995, finishing in 79th of 84. After this, it wasn’t until 2001 that the school returned to Michigan, and this year it placed 98th of 125. The team was then not seen again at competition until 2005. The team felt this year was going to be different, and it was. The team was fairly young, and while it only placed 109th of 140 schools, this experience gave them the desire to do something the other two teams couldn’t—return to competition the very next year. In 2006, much of the same team returned to begin anew the challenge of designing a competitive race car. Their persistence paid off, and in 2006 gained 33 positions over 2005’s mark to improve to 76th of 140, while also scoring points in all events except for the endurance event. Many of the same members from these two previous teams will be returning for 2007, with a new design already in the works. The 2007 design will incorporate a brand-new crate Honda CBR600RR engine that was won at competition last year, and should be a great improvement over last year’s car in terms of performance and reliability.

Go to Formula Team Website

Click on the thumbnail images below to view a larger image.