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"         When I came onboard at R&amp;amp;amp;T in 2000, I was adamant about covering the Formula SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) competition, because I wanted to give what I could back to FSAE. For without FSAE, I would not be at this magazine. And I imagine a lot of bright, energetic car enthusiasts would not have their automotive jobs without it as well. When I competed I had no idea how large the competition was, my team had a rulebook, and we built a car around the rules. When I arrived in Detroit for the event I was amazed at the number of other teams. The ingenuity, creativity, quality and number of completely different cars shocked me.   R&amp;amp;amp;T has been interested in FSAE since it&amp;#039;s inception in 1981. However our first major recognition of FSAE came during our Skidpad Challenge (February 1997) where the University of Texas, Arlington&amp;#039;s Faculty Advisor Dr. Bob Woods placed 5th in the Racing Class with an impressive 1.411 lateral g&amp;#039;s. What&amp;#039;s really impressive is that there were no wings used on that car; UTA didn&amp;#039;t start using an aero package until 2001.   Rainy, cloudy, unpleasant weather is the norm for the FSAE competition, which has been held in the parking lot of the Detroit Silver Dome during the month of May since 1994. This year was no different, except the rules were changed to allow rain tires, and teams were expected to compete in the wet. For the 1500 or so engineering students who were there, it was just another challenge.   Because the event has grown so large, there is now a 140-team entrance limit. School teams are told to register early. As expected the event this year did indeed meet that quota. There is a high attrition rate in the competition, as would be expected of custom-built cars. Congratulations to the 34 schools that survived the event in its entirety.   Noticeably absent this year were the teams from England, their excuse being that travel costs are prohibitive. They have their own competition called Formula Student, which is held in July and has less competitors, but no less competition. Australia has joined in and has its own called Formula Australasia; for weather reasons, their competition is held six months earlier than the other two. Any more competitions, and we&amp;#039;re going to have to start referring to this as a racing series.   This year&amp;#039;s winner of the Formula SAE competition was a rookie team last year. They are Australian, from the University of Wollongong, car number 136. The late Carroll Smith had given them accolades for their chassis design and construction at the Australian competition. All of us miss Carroll&amp;#039;s enthusiasim, experience and wonderful personality. For those who don&amp;#039;t know, Carroll Smith was team manager for Carroll Shelby and the dominating GT40&amp;#039;s that placed 1-2-3 at Le Mans in 1966. He was also an accomplished author and had been the chief design judge at FSAE since 1995. Every student at the competition has read his books.   I&amp;#039;d love to delve into the complexities of this event, having been a competitor three years ago, but with 120 different cars, there is too much to talk about. Instead I&amp;#039;ll let you look at the photos of these team entries and let you marvel at how different they all are. For an indication of their performance, check out the Road &amp;amp;amp; Track Trophy Competition, where we pit the five best dynamic cars against each other in a triathlon event ( issue). "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.roadandtrack.com/motorsports/news/a9627/2003-formula-sae-competition/>