Off to Detroit!

Well, SRT-07 is "finished" and we're leaving for competition in Detroit in about 18 hours. I'll make this brief, and I may not check in for a while, but I thought I'd post so I could get some wishes for good luck.

It's been two semesters of hard work, balancing school, fun, and mostly working on the car, but boy has it paid off. We should do pretty well this year, though the competition is going to be stiff.

If I get a chance, I'll post results on how we do in the events. Tomorrow will be a heck of a drive, through the night, till Tuesday when we arrive at the Ford Proving Grounds.

Wish us luck!


Here's a picture sans rear wing.

Good luck, Wesley! and good luck Team OU!! Call me and keep me updated.

Have fun!

Well we just rolled up at the Super 8, after driving through the night. I'm beat!

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: ujt389 on 5/16/07 4:06am ]</font>

Good luck!!

So, any news? How did the first day go?

Well, we got to the Ford Michigan Proving grounds at around 8AM, and got our paddock set up and got in line for tech inspection real early (we were first in, first out)

Tech went well, we had to make some minor changes to adhere to the rules as usual, shortening the wing endplates about an inch and getting a transponder for lap timing.

We finished up with Tech at about 4, and kicked around the paddock getting it prepped for Design Judging tomorrow - starts at 8, we have to be there at 7 so we can get the car ready, weighed, and judged. Then we have to pass sound tech. It's been good. If my camera batteries hadn't died, I'd have a thousand pictures to post. I'll get those tomorrow and posted. I do have a couple I'll post in a bit.

Ok, today were the Skidpad, Acceleration, and Autocross events. We ended up 4th in skidpad, 26th in Acceleration, and second place in the Autocross, losing to University of Texas in Arlington by 3 tenths of a second.

We're well on our way to a top 10 finish, it all comes down to the final endurance event tomorrow.

And I'm beat.

Well, a final update on the OU FSAE team. We had the endurance event today, a 22 lap sprint around a short course. This event is the one that weeds out the most people - and we proved to be no exception. After a full inspection of every nut and bolt, we had an electrical short and were unable to restart the car after the driver change at 11 laps.

Even one handed, (preventing the short) our first driver was within five seconds of the top school's team. If the short had not occured, it would be very possible for us to have finished top 5 out of 140 schools. As it is, we finished pretty low.

The design judges were very enthusiastic about our design, despite our design event going poorly. The coordinating judges had nothing but good things to say, and we were told by two of them that we had the best car they'd seen in a good while.

Because of this, I'm doubly looking forward to the California competition, now that we have some tuning and even more driving experience and can fix all the last minute things we couldn't for Detroit.

The Cali competition is in 3 weeks, at Fontana Speedway if anyone has any interest in seeing it. We'll be there!

Pictures still to come, I don't have my camera cable with me! [img]/forums/images/smiles/icon_frown.gif[/img]