1998 SAE MINI-BAJA EAST COMPETITION

AUBURN LADY TIGERS (Women’s Mini-Baja Team, car #11)

AUBURN UNIVERSITY (Men’s Mini-Baja Team, car #12)

RACE REPORT

17 May, 1998

            Both Mini-Baja teams returned last night from the three day Competition in Cookeville, Tennessee.  We don’t have a copy of the detailed results yet, but we do know that the men’s team was ninth overall, and the women’s team was eleventh (out of 50).  Considering that the men’s team rolled out a completely new (for Auburn) design concept, and had to repair several breakdowns during the endurance race, a top ten finish is outstanding and makes the picture for next year very bright indeed.  Considering that the women were a rookie team, and made the mistakes that rookies inevitably are prone to, that they got within 1 point (out of 1300) of a top ten finish is absolutely astounding.  No other first year team came close to them.  Even the simplest game of what-if easily puts the women in the top ten, and the men in the top five.  After this competition, Auburn’s reputation as a fine Baja school is stronger than ever.

            SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers, the sponsoring professional society) recognizes that the Mini-Baja Competition tends to be dominated by male engineering students.  After the 1997 Competition, SAE issued a challenge to the participating universities to field teams lead by female engineers.  Having no female team members in 1997, Auburn could not answer SAE’s challenge without asking the 1997 veterans to work under the direction of rookie team members, which was not viewed as a workable project organization.  Therefore, Auburn fielded two teams: one lead by the 1997 veterans, and a rookie team lead by the Auburn women who answered SAE’s challenge.  No other school was able to gather the female engineering talent necessary to field a women’s Mini-Baja team.  Auburn is only school out of about 175 participating institutions (in West, Midwest, and East regional Competitions) to ever enter an all-female Mini-Baja team.

            Before a Mini-Baja car can even go to the competition, it must be designed, funds must be raised, components must be identified and purchased, and all of the endless layout, cutting, fitting, welding, machining, installing, adjusting, testing, fixing, and testing again must be completed.  The team must write a detailed, technical design report, identifying how their design was determined, and demonstrating (on paper) that it will perform as expected.  The team also writes a production cost report, to demonstrate the cost and feasibility of mass-producing their design.  Building a car to stand up to the punishing Baja course is not easy, and takes countless extra-curricular hours from the core team members.  In return, the team learns what it takes to build real, working machinery.  More importantly, the team learns what it takes to finish a difficult product development on time and up to specification. 

            There could be no opportunity for a Mini-Baja entry without parts and supplies, both for building the car and for bringing it to the Competition and racing it.  For these, the teams would be lost without the generosity of their sponsors.  Both teams, and all of Auburn University, are eternally grateful to those individuals, businesses, and corporations who saw that sponsoring Auburn’s entries into this Competition would help make good engineers into great engineers, growing the sort of capable, can-do engineering talent that this country needs to compete in a global economy.  In the case of the Women’s Team, the effect is multiplied by sharing the experience of accomplishment and successful competition with female engineering students everywhere, and especially with prospective female engineering students.  The Women’s Team had just barely enough time and money to complete their car  (and just barely enough credit; some of the bills have yet to be paid).  Every thought of encouragement and every dime of contribution was desperately needed and deeply appreciated.

            The Mini-Baja Competition takes place over three days.  On the first day, the cars pass rigorous safety checks, and must repair any deficiencies before going on to race.  This inevitably leads to a frenzy in the pits, as last minute modifications and corrections are completed.  Design judging also takes place on the first day.  The second day features short driving events: acceleration; top speed; braking; weight pull; land maneuverability; water maneuverability; and suspension and traction.  Acceleration/top speed/braking are all done in one continuous run, and measured with a speed gun.  The weight pull features a weight sled as is seen at tractor pulls and the like, where the object is to pull the sled as far as possible while the sled becomes harder and harder to pull.  Land maneuverability is a slalom course around cones, run for speed.  Water maneuverability is the same thing only around buoys.  Suspension and traction demonstrates the true character of a Mini-Baja car, as the racers are timed over a course of bumps, climbs, drop-offs, and other obstacles that would tear apart any lesser vehicle.  The heart of the Competition is the third day, which features a four hour endurance race over a course which includes many of the features of the previous day’s short events, such as hills, bumps, slalom turns, and deep water.

            The highlight of the Competition was the women’s run through the suspension and traction event.  The course featured telephone poles, railroad ties, right angle turns, and slopes that could not be negotiated on foot.  Many cars couldn’t negotiate the course at all, and everyone had put this event off for last, so there was a large crowd gathered.  With Captain Jacque Cole driving, the car leapt over the first telephone pole and then came to a dead stop, hung up on the second pole.  A one inch diameter solid steel jackshaft, one foot long, had been bent into a two inch bow by the force of the deceleration.  It was now 3:30 p.m. on Friday afternoon in Cookeville, and the prescription was for a new hardened steel shaft with a machined keyway.  Somehow the women filled the bill and got it installed in time to take their second run.  This time, Jacque took a better line through the telephone poles.  She rattled through another set of poles and then up the first hill.  The car’s ground clearance wasn’t enough, and it hung up on the crest of the hill.  Jacque hurled herself back in the seat to knock the car back down the hill so she could take a second run at it.  Hung up again.  More body slams (for those of you who don’t know her, Jacque weighs about 80 lbs. dripping wet), hung up the third time, but wriggled over on the fourth.  Now careening around the tight turns, down the first (nearly shear) drop-off, and through the first set of railroad ties set at 45 degrees to the course.  The women saved weight and complexity by doing without a rear suspension, and somehow the bounce of the tires was inadvertently tuned perfectly with the set of the railroad ties to keep the rear wildly bouncing and the crowd roaring because of the grit Jacque showed in the hilltop hangup.  Then around another hairpin turn, up another impossible hill, and down the second drop-off with Jacque driving hell for leather.  The second, much longer set of 45 degree railroad ties left the car bucking like a mad bull shot with red pepper spray.  With the crowd screaming and bits and pieces of the course boundary marker plastered all over it, the car landed in a cloud of dust at the finish.  That picture was shown at the awards banquet and got the loudest, longest applause of a very enthusiastic evening.  ‘Jacque’s wild ride’ will go down in Baja history, at Auburn and everywhere else.

            Overall, the women’s car performed well.  The gearing could have been lower for more low end acceleration, and the fender system could have kept the engine drier.  But so much for 20/20 hindsight.  The car handled well and the frame demonstrated that it was perfectly strong.  It kept running to the end of the devilishly tough endurance race without breakdown (though time was lost searching for a missing piece of required safety gear), a feat that can be boasted of by very few of the cars entered.  Jacque’s welding skills and outstanding project management stood up to an extreme test.  Jacque also drove the water maneuverability event, after which the fenders were extensively modified to keep water out of the air cleaner.  Christie Coplen demonstrated great driving finesse, turning in a very high finish in the land maneuverability event (a slalom course).  Christie also turned in the best endurance lap times, taking the very demanding long, muddy, twisting, steep downhill like an expert skier.  Christie, co-designer/builder of the outstandingly tough and responsive steering and front suspension system, pulled the replacement jackshaft out of her hat, and her business acumen kept the team financially afloat through expert fundraising.  Christie also did the acceleration/top speed/braking run.  The gearing was too tall to get much acceleration, but the car stopped on a half-dime.  Julie Borstorff, the other half of the steering/front suspension team (motto: ‘no way is this going to break!’), made an art of chasing other cars down in the water in the endurance race, leaning to trim the car out just right for the best propulsive performance and pulling lap upon lap horse races with a very quick Virginia Tech car.  Julie also turned in a good score in the weight pull.  Julie and Sherilyn Posey rebuilt the car’s flotation late at night before the endurance race, after Jacque’s wild ride left bits and pieces of foam scattered all over the course.  Sherilyn drove cleanup in the endurance race, picking up those extra laps while most cars were going to pieces.  Andi Hood served as pit boss and on the refueling crew, imposing order on what could easily have become an unworkable litter of parts, tools, equipment, life support systems (fluids, food, and shade), and the other debris of racing.

            Special notice must be given to Adam Barnes, who left the men’s team to help the women.  Adam worked as long and hard as anyone, and longer and harder than most, on turning the women’s car into a reality.  As a measure of how much he meant to the team, note that the women’s car is named Adam.

            There were no other women’s teams at the competition (although a few other teams had a few woman team members).  In their first year, starting from scratch (a question at one of the earlier meetings, which none of the other team members were confident enough to answer, was: what is this ‘hub’ thing you keep talking about?”), an understaffed team of Auburn women with no automotive experience fairly beat 39 other schools, mostly veterans of Mini-Baja, and lost no honor to the other ten.  But for a few bad breaks here and there, the women would have been well into the single digits in overall place.  The glow left over from this success will last a long time.

            The women’s team will suffer a 75% graduation loss of its key workers.  Unless a new core of dedicated women comes forward this fall, it appears that the women’s veterans will lend their formidable Baja skills to a united Auburn Mini-Baja 99 team.

            The men’s car is named Humpty-Dumpty because even before the competition there seemed to be a lot of putting it back together again.  But, after it was all over, when asked what they would change in overall concept for next year’s competition, the team replied “nothing, just work out the bugs”.  Humpty is Auburn’s first independent rear suspension car, requiring a completely new drivetrain arrangement, and, with Adam, one of our first double A-arm front suspension cars, requiring a whole new look at the black art of steering and suspension set-up.  Daniel Orille drove the acceleration/top speed/ braking event to open the competition.  The speed was fine, but two wheel braking was definitely not enough.  Next year all four wheels will have brakes.  Captain Dale Butler put the car through the weight pull for a good score, and drove the water maneuverability.  That event was made easy by Stephen Chambless’ skills as a naval architect.  The car floats high and level, propels and steers well, and behaves in the water as well as any duck.  Cory Nickchen completed the land maneuverability (slalom) event in fine style.  The performance advantages of all the suspension complexity were made clear when Matt Middleton flew through the tortuous suspension and traction course with the car’s body moving on a straight line and all four wheels leaping up and down like drumsticks on a long roll.  It seems that a suitable instrument has been found for Matt’s formidable driving skills.  Bobby Replogle, the men’s front suspension/steering wizard, made it clear at the start of the endurance race that we had a contender by turning in some quick lap times.  Nathan Howard (Interim Captain during Dale’s training with the Marines, and father of the through-the-barrier drivetrain) kept up the march, but now the steering problems discovered during the second (short event) day started to get more frequent.  The problem was the steering rack, which performed smoothly and precisely (thanks to Sam Sipper’s design/construction skills), but the team underestimated the steering loads imposed by a Baja course, and the rack extension rods bent time after time, even after reinforcing them the night before the endurance race.  Nathan had to pull Humpty off the course, but a Baja pit crew can fix anything, and the car was repaired and thrown back out onto the course twice during the endurance race (at the cost of an hour and a half of a four hour race).  The whole crew, even Robby Daily who couldn’t drive because of a visit by the 24 hour bug, sprinted back and forth between the pit and the down car to get the spare rack installed, and then repaired the original rack, and then reinstalled the original rack when the spare rack broke down.  Stephen finished up the endurance race, looking for that fine edge of just how hard the car could be pushed to get more laps without causing another breakdown.

            The men’s team built a good car to a creative design, campaigned it hard, and got a good finish.  Their what-if game is as tantalizing to play as the women’s, and anticipation for next year is running high.  A good team of good people worked hard, and their product shows it.  The men’s team graduation loss will be minimal, though we’re always looking for good freshmen and sophomores, or anyone who wants to work hard for a winning team.

            The 1999 Competition will be in Orlando, Florida, featuring a tight course through sand, scrub, streams, and bogs designed by the most infamous of Baja coursemeisters.  The Briggs and Stratton 8 hp utility engine, in Baja use since 1977, will be out of production and will be replaced by one of Briggs’ ‘Performance Plus’ series.  With a new power plant, an experienced team, and two fine example cars to work from, the chances for the united Auburn Mini-Baja 99 team look better than ever for going to the top.