Inside the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, standing on NASCAR’s temporary quarter-mile track, the USC Formula SAE racing team celebrated its victory. While the race took less than an hour, the efforts behind it were months in the making.
“It’s a good result that the team deserves,” said team president Jiyu Qian after the race. “We cannot say this is one person’s resolve because all the 50 team members contributed very highly with our advisors towards this result.”
The faculty is proud of the team’s accomplishment as well.
“This particular team that we’ve had for almost three years is a unit. They all back each other up,” said senior lab technician and staff advisor William Colvin. “If one person is doing a project and they’re having trouble with it, it’s rare they ask for help because help just comes in.”
To Colvin’s point, some of the team members are roommates who spend most of their free time together working on the car.
On Saturday, the team used the race car that competed at Michigan International Speedway last June. As part of the competition, the racing team is required to build a new car each year, putting the team on a tight schedule.
Data collection, data validation and composing computer-aided designs take place over the fall semester. By November, the team starts tapering down on the design, which is called “Design Freeze.” Then, the team moves into a three-month manufacturing phase: building everything from scratch except for the engine, the wheels and the shocks. Intensive testing and tuning finish off the process and last all the way before the competition.
Last year, the team didn’t finish designing until the middle of the spring semester, which is 10 to 12 weeks later than they previously did. The rectifier failed and the car battery died during the competition — which lowered the score for the car’s reliability test.
With the wrong mentality, building the car could be a daunting process. However, the team has its share of fun through it all.
“The team likes to make some jokes,” said Chief Engineer and Project Manager Amani Ghonim. “We like to keep it light because we do see each other at least 20 hours a week. Sometimes you get tired of each other.”
An example of this light-hearted nature was when members started hiding little “Among Us” icons all over the car. There’s one vinyl printed on the steering wheel, a 3D printed “Among Us” house hiding inconspicuously inside the corner of the little data acquisition device. They are purposefully scattered throughout the car as a constant reminder of the team spirit.
Because of the tight schedule, many car components are made and completed in-house, including layering up for carbon fiber aerodynamic packages, welding, notching of the frames and much more. According to Qian, who is mostly responsible for sponsorship and marketing, a car usually costs the team around $80,000 to build from scratch.
Right now, the team is building a new vehicle called SCR 23. They will be competing this May at Michigan International Speedway.