SAE Baja fun

[LarryHoward]

Spent the weekend with the UMBC SAE Baja Team at one of their 3 annual competitions.

Yesterday, at the endurance event, Auburn demonstrated the "low drag" approach to a long downhill. Although they restarted with no injuries, the car later experienced failures of both right rear suspension links.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTx7l3M90FY[/youtube]

Our Team had a pretty good short event performance other than my son trashing the steering rack coming off an obstacle at speed. Discovered an undetected crack at a bolt hole and snapped it in half in overload. A spare made that better after an hour or so. Their endurance run was going well but cut short by a failure of the CVT secondary pulley. They are nursing an old (3rd year) transmission while waiting for new parts from a donor that still need heat treat. They managed to "McGuyver" it back together in about 30 minutes (a 4 hour event) but the "fix" failed after about 25 minutes. DNF.

[Orestes Munn]

Holy shit! Looks like someone got lucky there.

[LarryHoward]

Holy shit! Looks like someone got lucky there.

There is a reason for the specs on frame, driver protection and driver retention, including arm straps to keep flailing down. Rollovers are not unusual but multiple flips like that certainly make the highlight reel.

For Lynne on Mother's Day, it was fortunate that Chris had passed by around 2 minutes earlier (5 minute lap) so she knew it wasn't him when she watched it unfold.

[Rob McAlpine]

I guess that, just like in sailboat racing, upside down is slow.