Race Car

Contents
Introduction 5 Superfast 9 The First Meeting of the Year 17 A Change of Plans 28 Staying On Schedule 36 The Business of Racing 43 Falling Behind Schedule 50 The Occasional Collision 56 Soccer Four Square 62 Hawaii Local Time 70 The Final Touches 75 Detroit 81 The Races 93 More Final Touches 103 California 108 Panoramic 116 Dancing on the Edge 120 Finals 129 Epilogue 136 Pictures 139About the Author 150 Copyright 151

For Mitch and Gloria, Lee and Michelle, and all the other moms and dads who spent their time and money so that we kids could play with our racecars.

Introduction
I’m not the type of person to quit something partway through; I feel that it’s important to finish what I’ve started. I’m also not the type of person to sit down and think about things before Istart them. That is, I don’t think about how much time and money it will cost me in the end. Well, that’s not entirely true; I usually sit down for about 15 seconds and pull some numbers straight out of my bum. But then I forget to incorporate the rule of Pi. The rule of Pi goes like this: If you think it will take you a week to build a desk, it will actually take you about 3.14 weeks. And if thebudget for said desk is $100, you will be out $314 before it’s all over. Auto racing is a little bit different than desk building. The equation for time and money spent on any auto racing venture looks like this:

∑
Where Money is all the money you will make in the next ten years and Gf is any semblance of a relationship you expect to maintain. (Note: If you substitute Gf with Wife, then youhave to add LawyerDivorce and then Money approaches an asymptote which is roughly equal to the Gross Domestic Product of Belgium.) Formula SAE is no different. Most of the money to build the car comes from the school and sponsors, yet somehow, you will have no money. Anyway, the graphical representation looks something like this:

A lot

enthusiasm money None
0 10 20 30 40 50

expectationsdebt girlfriend

Less than none

The X axis represents the number of weeks spent on the project. Of course, you expected to be done around week 30, but when 30 comes around and you’re not even close, you start to frantically spend money and time trying to finish your project. Expectations swing wildly between “Greatest formula car in history” and “I swear to god I’m going to set this thing onfire and push it into the ocean.” Around week 40 your roommate starts to suspect that your wild mood swings are the result of a cocaine addiction, your mounting debt looks suspiciously like you have a cocaine addiction, and you start to wish you had spent all your time and money on something less addicting and less destructive to your health and social life. Cocaine, for instance. You quit your jobeight months ago when last year’s car was behind schedule and you “needed” to spend an extra 20 hours a week on it. You could save money on food by eating at home but you don’t have time to cook, you don’t know how to cook, and your oven smells questionable ever since you used it to bake a carbon

fiber steering wheel. Your grades are dropping like panties at all the frat parties you’ve neverbeen to, and the school wants $1200 for that class you failed last semester because for some reason, financial aid only counts if you don’t get an F. Week 50 rolls around. Your expectations are nil, you can’t remember what classes you’re supposed to be going to, you start to confuse your net worth with the national debt clock, and you’ve actually scouted an area in Texas where you can easily roll aflaming formula car off a cliff and into the Gulf of Mexico. New members ask how they can help. You resist the urge to shake them violently, slap them in the face and yell “Get out while you still can! Don’t worry about me, I’m already gone! You have to live on! Live on without auto racing!” Instead, you hand them a wrench and put them to work. For the last two weeks approaching the race, you...