Racecar Teams Show Off Speed at SoCal Shootout

Dec. 4, 2018 - Two of UC Irvine’s racecar teams won speed contests at the 2018 SoCal Shootout in October at Adams Motorsports Park in Riverside.

The Samueli School ran two of its cars, Wraith and Marauder, in separate sessions. Wraith, the single-seat autocross internal combustion car, faced five other schools: Cal State University Fullerton, Cal Poly Pomona, Cal State University Sacramento, California Baptist University and UC Riverside. The UCI team was particularly interested in beating CSU Sacramento because they regularly place in the top 20 at the annual Formula SAE competition in Lincoln, Nebraska. Formula SAE is a student design competition organized by the Society of Automotive Engineers.

UCI’s Baja car, Marauder, is a single-seat all-terrain sporting vehicle that raced uncontested.

For each session, the student teams tested and practiced car control during line racing, critical maneuvers, throttle, braking points and touching the "apex"—a point on the inside edge of a turn. They also paid close attention to chassis dynamics throughout the weekend. Saturday was all about who could put down the fastest time.

Alex Luna, Wraith team manager, said the students’ enthusiasm was unreal. “We were able to see our hard work finally pay off placing first with both cars.”

“Aside from winning first place, the competition allowed us to further test our systems and make progress tuning the setup,” said Matt McMurray of the 25-member Wraith team. ”We were able to learn a lot from both watching other cars as well as from professionals on the scene.”

In addition to Wraith and Marauder, Anteater Racing also has an electric racecar team. All three teams are striving to engineer vehicles that can compete effectively in spring 2019.

“We are finishing up the designs for our cars for FSAE Lincoln 2019,” said Andrew Bankson, team lead on the electric racecar.  “We plan to begin manufacturing this month and begin testing by late March. With competitions in May and June, we are on a tight schedule.”

– Lori Brandt