The Texas A&M Formula SAE team won 2nd Place Overall, and 1st Place in the Endurance Event in the 2014 Formula SAE Lincoln Student Design Competition, held at the Lincoln Airpark in Lincoln, Nebraska from June 18th to June 21st.
In the endurance event, Texas A&M completed 14 laps, split into two seven lap segments with a driver change in the middle, with the fastest lap time, winning first place. Out of the 60 schools that participated in the endurance event, only 29 were able to finish.
The Formula SAE Team and Dr. Make McDermott
The Texas A&M Formula SAE team conceives, designs, fabricates, tests and develops a small Formula style competition racecar, to participate in the Formula SAE Series competition each year. The project is undertaken as a two-semester capstone design sequence in the courses Interdisciplinary Design I and II, conducted by Dr. Make McDermott, in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Students design the car in the fall semester, and build and develop it in the spring semester.
The Texas A&M Racecar
The Formula SAE Series competitions challenge teams of university undergraduate and graduate students, giving them a chance to demonstrate and prove their creativity and engineering skills in comparison to teams from other universities in the nation, and around the world. There are only a few restrictions on the overall vehicle design, allowing the teams great design flexibility, and freedom to express their creativity and imagination. The cars are judged on the basis of a series of static and dynamic events that include technical inspection, cost, presentation, engineering design, solo performance trials, and high performance track endurance.