Michigan Baja Racing takes home awards at SAE Williamsport competition

In 1905, the Society of Automotive Engineers was formed out of an office in New York City, hoping to encourage the exchange of ideas, establish engineering standards and compile new innovations. The organization’s inaugural vice president was Henry Ford, a Michigan engineer who would go on to found the Ford Motor Company and shape the automobile industry for the rest of history.

119 years later, another Michigan-based engineering powerhouse is involved in the organization, now named SAE International. Michigan Baja Racing, a University of Michigan student-led engineering and design team, competed in the off-road vehicle Baja SAE Series and brought automotive awards back to the state. At the Baja SAE Williamsport competition in Pennsylvania May 16, Michigan Baja took home first place in the cost audit, third in the acceleration and design presentation events and sixth in suspension and traction. The team finished 11th overall.

The competition marks the second appearance of MBR 34, the team’s car for the season that was unveiled March 18. In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Engineering junior Pablo Elizondo Del Bosque, the technical director for the team, said MBR 34’s production started as early as last September.

“We take on the whole design for the whole first semester, with a bunch of smaller deadlines there,” Del Bosque said. “With this huge car, we prioritize being more capable than previous year’s cars, because that was a big weakness of our previous vehicle … Once the designs are completed and verified, we start manufacturing the car about late first semester and then on to second semester.”

According to SAE’s rules, at least 10% of the new car must be different from the previous year’s design. Del Bosque said this benchmark is easy for the team to meet, especially because SAE introduced new engine and four-wheel drive components in recent years.

“Four years ago, they added four-wheel drive as a component to these vehicles, so that’s something that’s constantly changing dramatically year to year since it’s so new,” Del Bosque said. “We started trying to figure out what the best route to go is. Also, we had a new engine … we had to use last year, which is (a) different size , which affects packaging and affects every single design around it …  so we’re still optimizing those things.”

The team constructed MBR 34 at the Wilson Student Team Project Center, which houses many other U-M engineering teams and offers students access to workshop equipment. Engineering junior Marisa May, head of sponsor outreach and recruitment for Michigan Baja, told The Daily the team produces most of the car’s components themselves and is supported by outsourcing to sponsors for the remaining parts. 

“We manufacture about 95% of the components in the car in the Wilson Center,” May said. “But then those additional 5% are just out of our machine shop’s capabilities. Those get sent out to other amazing sponsors that do a ton of really great machining work for us.”

Over the course of the competition, teams compete in two categories of events: static and dynamic. The static events include a cost audit, a sales presentation and a design presentation. May told The Daily the cost audit, in which Michigan Baja placed first, was more in-depth than simply trying to create the cheapest car possible.

“You’re basically reporting to SAE how much every aspect of your car costs,” May said. “As you go through reporting the cost of your car, you go in front of a couple of industry judges at the competition, and they essentially try to find things that you didn’t report on your car. If they find something, it gets added to your car’s cost times three … The cost event is more about how successful we were able to report every component of our car.”

The static design competition, in which Michigan Baja was awarded third place, required the team to present their car to judges and answer increasingly difficult questions about the technical aspects of their design.

The dynamic events of the competition included a hill climb; a maneuverability test; a suspension and traction obstacle course; and the acceleration event — another third-place finish for the team that tested the top speed of the car over a distance of 100 feet.

On the final day of the competition, any car that passed the technical inspection and was still operational competed in the endurance race. For four hours, teams attempted to complete as many laps as possible on a difficult off-road racetrack. In an interview with The Daily, Engineering junior Nathan Gariepy, the drivetrain director and team driver, said the endurance race was one of the most taxing events of the competition.

“For the Williamsport competition, we started the race with over 100 cars, and not nearly as many finish as start,” Gariepy said. “You’re racing for four hours against other people on the same course. It’s kind of designed to break your car. If you break, you have the opportunity to get towed back to your pits, fix your car and go back out, which happened a lot to us this time.”

Gariepy drove MBR 34 for the suspension and traction course, one of the acceleration event runs, and for the entirety of the endurance event. He said the high level of difficulty involved with the endurance event was demanding, especially because of the car’s mechanical failures.

“It’s also a lot of strain on your driver, because you’re driving through mud and water and avoiding other cars, and all the time you’re going over obstacles as well,” Gariepy said. “The way that we do it is we have one driver drive the whole race. A lot of other teams will split it up into two, or sometimes three. We were out with a lot of component failures, (so) we had a lot of time in the pits … We did see lots of component failures that we’re gonna have to fix for the next competition.”

The team completed 24 laps, placing 35th in the endurance race. Despite their success in other events, Del Bosque said the team dealt with multiple component failures throughout the competition.

“We pretty much discovered an Achilles heel of our car,” Del Bosque said. “Because it was designed … in single shear, especially the bottom ball joint, the amount of force it would take … kept loosening the bolt, so then at certain points (we’d) lose the whole bolt completely. Once we lose that bolt, the whole front tire kind of goes everywhere.”

The weakness of the car’s corner led to breaks in suspension links and tie rods, among other parts. Del Bosque said the team worked hard throughout the endurance race to fix the issues temporarily.

“It happened multiple times,” Del Bosque said. “After the first or second time, we tried to put some quick fixes, but those did some harm. So we ended up having to replace a corner about three or four times during the race.”

The team will compete for the third and final time this season at the Baja SAE Michigan competition on Sept. 12 through 15, just over an hour away from Ann Arbor. Even though the car faced mechanical problems, the team members said they believe MBR 34 has the potential to be a competition winner in the fall. Del Bosque said that after Michigan Baja sent Gariepy and the car back out during the endurance race, MBR 34’s lap time demonstrated the strength of the design.

“The most clear memory I have of this competition was getting Nathan back out there after breaking the third or fourth time and then him breaking the lap record for the whole race,” Del Bosque said. “We’ve proven that this car can go really fast and it’s really capable and that Nathan’s a good driver. We just need to fix those one or two weaknesses to make it durable now, and once we fix that I truly believe this car could take a first place at a competition.”

Summer News Editor Marissa Corsi can be reached at macorsi@umich.edu.

The post Michigan Baja Racing takes home awards at SAE Williamsport competition appeared first on The Michigan Daily.