Texas A&M places fifth, wins Editors Choice Award in national $2009 Grassroots Challenge race competition
Aggies working on their Grassroots $2009 race car.
It’s competition on the cheap.
A 1993 Honda Civic built and raced by Texas A&M University engineering and engineering technology students has placed fifth among 58 teams in the $2009 Grassroots Challenge.
The annual competition, sponsored by Grassroots Motorsports magazine and Kumho Tires, features cars built and raced on a limited budget. This year’s Grassroots Challenge, for instance, consisted of cars built for $2,009 or less, including the cost of the car. Next year’s competitors will campaign cars costing $2,010 or less.
The event consists of drag racing, autocross and a concourse, or car show event. The Texas A&M team was one of two university-based teams in the competition. The other was from Georgia Tech. The others consisted of racing enthusiasts from across the United States.
Building a competitive car on such a tight budget posed a challenge for the students, said project manager Sam Craven, a senior majoring in engineering technology.
“Ninety percent of the parts in the car were second-hand and we had to rebuild most of them,” Craven said.
The Aggie team placed fifth overall in the contest.
The team started building the car in January, starting with a visit to a Houston junkyard for the junkyard’s annual Jan. 1 “half-price day.” There they found a Volvo turbocharger, Honda body panels,and suspension and brakes from an Acura Integra, all of which found their way into the car.
Construction of the car was done entirely by volunteers, Craven said, mostly students interested in building the race car Texas A&M will campaign in the 2010 Formula Hybrid competition. That competition involves building an internal combustion-electric hybrid race car. Texas A&M’s 2009 car won the international Formula Hybrid competition, the first time the university entered a team.
“This project is a warm up for the Formula Hybrid team,” Craven said. “It’s a good way for the volunteers to become more familiar with what’s involved in building a race car.”
The 2009 Grassroots car placed 7th in both the drag race and autocross events and 15th in the concourse to finish 5th on the basis of points awarded. It also won the Editors Choice trophy as the Grassroots Motorsports editors’ favorite car at the competition.
The team plans to build a new car to compete next year in the $2010 challenge and try again with this year’s car.
Team members who made the trip to the Florida competition were: Kyle Coles, a junior in petroleum engineering; Craven; Michael Finkelshteyn, a senior in ocean engineering; Eduardo Ibarra, a senior in engineering technology (crew chief), Chang Liu, a senior in engineering technology; Luis Savcic, a senior in mechanical engineering; Paul St. Martin, a senior in mechanical engineering; Jacob Sieverling, a sophomore in engineering technology (crew chief); and Christopher Willy, a senior in mechanical engineering.
Craven and Coles split driving duties for the competition.
This year’s team received support from Texas A&M University, Howell Racing Fuels of Bryan, Texas World Speedway in College Station, and Shell Oil.
More photos and videos are available at http://s950.photobucket.com/albums/ad348/tamusae/?start=0. To find out more about the Grassroots Challenge team, visit http://tamusae.org.
Contact Sam Craven, s.craven08@gmail.com
Written by Gene Charleton, genecharleton@tamu.edu
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