The loudest and fastest student club at Syracuse University is coming out of the woodwork.

It’s called Citrus Racing, and it isn’t a half-baked go-karting venture — it’s actual Formula car racing. As a participant of the Formula SAE Collegiate Design Series, the team is tasked with the development and construction of a single-seat race car with the best package of design, construction, performance and cost. Once the car is built and tested, the goal shifts to competition against other schools across the United States.

Citrus Racing’s current car was in development for about a year before it was taken to competition at Formula North in Barrie, Ontario in early June. The team brought a fully functioning car to the June 2-5 competition, with high hopes after working about 2,000 hours to develop it.

Oliver Scigliano, the team’s driver and a senior economics major at SU, said the team felt “right on point” for its third year entering the competition. But unfortunately for the team, Formula North didn’t quite turn out the way Citrus Racing wanted it to.

During tech inspection the judges found some problems with Citrus Racing’s car that forced them to the back of the pack. Of the 25 schools competing, SU finished 24th. That placing was the consequence of “a leaky fuel tank, electrical issues, brake issues and other things along the way,” said Josh Beckerman, president of Citrus Racing and a senior mechanical engineering major.

To win a Formula SAE event, it’s paramount to excel at both the static and dynamic sections of the competition. The dynamic section includes an acceleration and braking test, a skid pad road-holding trial, autocross and a 13.7-mile endurance test. The static set of events includes design judging, a business proposal, a cost report and a design report.

As college students without racecar building experience, the task of making an extremely fast car from scratch on a limited budget can seem like a huge task.

“It all starts with speculation,” chief engineer Jeffrey Clark said, a senior mechanical engineering major.

As chief engineer, Clark oversees all the departments that combine to make the car, including the brakes, suspension, chassis, engine, drivetrain, control systems and vehicle dynamics.

If one detail of the car is overlooked, it will be magnified during competition. The department leaders are responsible for what became a full-time job outside of their traditional schoolwork.

Kali Addison Bowen | Contributing Photographer

Once ideas are laid out on the table, the team begins to make those ideas into real concepts on the computer, Clark said. Simulations show how parts of the car will react under real-life conditions, and the viability of certain parts is debated.

After the theoretical stuff is worked through in the computer, manufacturing begins. Students use equipment at SU labs to weld, lathe, cut and everything else in between to make the pieces that will grace the Formula car. As soon as the necessary parts are made, the team methodically assembles the car until a running moving vehicle is standing in front of them.

The final step before competition is testing. If Citrus Racing was a professional race car team, there would be hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars spent throughout the process, and countless hours spent testing under race conditions.

Clark said he would love to experiment with aero, carbon fiber and other more advanced Formula techniques, but in the end he has to temper himself in favor of cost and reliability of the car.

Citrus Racing worked feverishly for a year on its car before throwing it right into competition, so there wasn’t time for all of that valuable testing and tweaking. That showed in Ontario.

After starting from essentially nothing three years ago, Clark said he thinks the current car is a huge step in the right direction, but he added that there will be changes to make sure the team can get it past tech next time, including “better attention to detail in subsystems like the fuel and brake system.”

Since the car had so many issues at tech inspection, the team had to make a lot of last-minute changes in Ontario to try to get it out on the track. But Scigliano, who has competed professionally in Sports Car Club of America Majors, NASA racing and Formula Ford, likened the driving experience to those of other Formula-type cars.

The car is powered by a Suzuki GSX-R 600 engine. The motor and transmission to go with it were taken out of a motorcycle and modified to comply to Formula SAE rules and to make more power.

Beyond the engineering and driving aspects of Formula SAE, Citrus Racing also needs a fair amount of business help. Securing sponsorships is vital to the team’s success. There’s also a business presentation that goes toward the final judging. The presentation consists of a pitch to would-be buyers on why they might want to buy the car as a weekend autocross racer. So it’s not just engineering students who are involved with this club, but business and communications students as well.

“This ‘engineer’ club isn’t just for engineers. If there’s one thing I want everyone to know, it’s (that) all are welcome,” Beckerman said.

Formula SAE is called Formula Student outside the U.S., and holds much larger competitions than what is held domestically. Teams from around the world compete and eventually get whittled down to the very best who take each other on in Germany.

“That’s the long-term goal, is to get to Formula Student Germany and race internationally against other teams,” Beckerman said.

Published on September 5, 2016 at 10:29 pm

Contact: zipalmer@syr.edu