Monserrat Rodrigues is a grad student and a master of communication management program.. She was one of the few people allowed in the Coliseum. Nascar let her in to take photos of the USC Racing team driving around the track.. Rodrigues says the USC car looked super-cool but small!
RODRIGUES: It looked like a tiny rocket ship or like spaceship, and it just looks like I don’t know if you’re familiar with like the Looney Tunes cartoons and stuff. It was like a tiny machine and it just had a lot of like metal parts and stuff like that. And like the fact they have like the USC logo and it was like gold and stuff.
She was expecting to see the car take off like a rocket ship. Alas...
RODRIGUES: I just had a feeling that it was super fast. But again, they could only go 20 miles per hour because of like safety issues and stuff.
USC Racing Club built their car during the pandemic.
RODRIGUES: It seemed pretty like solid, strong, probably even stronger than the actual race cars. I grew up like watching, you know, NASCAR races with my like my dad and such, but to actually see a track in person and just be down there, it was pretty cool and a fun effect. The built the track on top of the football field. So there’s still the grass is still down. But then there’s like a six foot foundation and then there’s the asphalt around it.
The NASCAR race is this Sunday. Students get a discount on tickets, and if you get hooked, USC Racing Club is open to all majors and years. It’s true that most of the team is made up of engineers, but, you don’t have to be an engineer to get involved! And the Club leaders say that by taking students out of the classroom and letting them apply textbook theories to real-world problems, USC’s Formula SAE Racing Club produces some of the most talented and highly desired graduates in the country.