This is Part 1 of a series written by guest writer Ricky Nietubicz on his experience on the Formula SAE team at the University of Delaware. FSAE is a competition where students design, build, and compete with small formula-style racing cars. Ricky was President of his FSAE club, and his team went to the Nationals in Detroit during the 2006-2007 season.

So there I was, a freshman registered as a Political Science major at the University of Delaware. On the second or third night after you move in, there is an “activities night” in one of the student centers, where all of the organizations, clubs, fraternities and whatnot on campus show off what it is that they do in order to recruit new members. I wandered about with a couple people from my dorm, seeing what there was. A little bit of everything. Not having any interest whatsoever in stand-up comedy, plays, or the countless politically-oriented clubs, I just kind of wandered aimlessly. But then, tucked way away in the back corner of the room, what to my wondering eyes should appear, but four slicks and gleaming, polished-aluminum wheels. A little race car. Right there. I couldn’t abandon my companions fast enough.

Ok, fine, the car was a little beat up and didn’t gleam that much. And the tubing was painted a pretty revolting piss-yellow. But there it was. Students built this? Yes. You get to drive this? Yes. Anybody who works on the car drives the car. Do you have to be an engineer? Nope, we can put anybody to work. Where do I sign?

I had read about FSAE in Road and Track in years past, but never thought to look for a team at the University of Delaware. So I put my name on the email list and showed up for a meeting. So what do we do? We build race cars. Then we get to take them to competition, in Detroit. All you have to do is show up and put in some elbow grease.

No problem, I was once a motorcycle mechanic. I don’t remember the last time I paid anybody to work on a car for me, and that’s not because my cars are freakishly reliable. Even better, the frame was already designed and built, so all we had to do was make the bodywork, seat, instrumentation, controls, engine, and… ok, we had to build the whole car. But the frame was done.

A few weeks into the semester and all of a sudden one of the major problems was already presenting itself. The frame was welded together by someone who was just learning to use a TIG machine, who neglected to move around. (This is FSAE. The guy is a pretty darn good welder now, but everyone starts somewhere, and you learn as you go.) So the whole thing was slightly crooked. The fact that it was made on a table that wasn’t quite flat didn’t really help, either. That was the first one of those “well, we know now, wish we had known then…” moments, the first of many. We learned a lot, just by doing the work to get the car together.

Of course, FSAE teams consist of a lot more than a team of engineers, builders and drivers, and the work that needs to be done consists of a lot more than the glory jobs of building the car and racing it. You need to come up with a budget, a timeline, deadlines. You need to get people to actually meet those deadlines. Everybody wants to tinker with the motor, or learn how to dyno tune, nobody really wants to shave molds for bodywork, or calculate suspension geometries. Nobody really wants to handle fundraising, and yes, you need to raise funds. Lots of ‘em. Nobody wants to sit in meetings with the school bigwigs that decide how much money you get from the school. But these are just some of the plethora of tasks that must be done in order to get a car together and get it to competition successfully.

In my years with the University of Delaware FSAE team, I saw a lot of different things get tried, some worked and some didn’t. I saw a lot of problems, some of which we could solve, others we couldn’t. Some were unique to situations within our school, but most were things that happen anywhere and everywhere. Through this series of articles, I will attempt to convey, as eloquently as possible, what I learned from FSAE, so that some other teams can hopefully avoid the same pitfalls, and not be held up by the same challenges.

Always remember that FSAE is, first and foremost, an engineering competition. Yes, it is an engineering competition that results in a really cool race car, and you get to compete in the dynamic events and put it through its paces, but engineering is the backbone of the competition. Design and cost, which take the form of reports submitted in advance of the actual competition, are major components of your score. Another major component is the endurance event, as it is much easier to design a car that can be fast than to design one that can stay running for several miles. It’s even harder to build a good performer that holds up real well. There is an enormous amount of work to be done.

In my three years at the University of Delaware as an undergrad (saved a boatload on out of state tuition graduating a year early) I spent entirely too much time in the shop tinkering with cars. Did a lot, learned a lot, wouldn’t trade it for anything. Met plenty of good friends and my girlfriend on the team, and I was president my third year (so is that junior or senior?). Hopefully in this series of articles I can help spread the lessons I learned elsewhere, and hopefully somebody, somewhere, will find these musings useful.