Cars and Teams with All Texas Schools on the Front Row

Texas Autocross Weekend 2005

The 5th annual Texas Autocross Weekend was held on the campus of the University of Texas at Arlington during the weekend of 15 – 17 July. There were 9 teams represented from the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA), the University of Texas (UT), Texas A&M University (TAMU), Texas Tech (Tech), the University of New Mexico (UNM), Oklahoma State University (OSU), the University of Oklahoma (OU), the University of Kansas (KU), and the University of Alabama (UA). In addition to these schools that brought cars, there were observers from Louisiana State University, and Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo Leon, Mexico.

UTA brought out 7 of its cars, UT had 3, TAMU, UNM, OU, and KU each had 2 cars. That was a total of 21 cars with over 100 FSAE students. In addition to the students and faculty advisors, we had several of our sponsors from A.E. Petsche Co., Peterbilt, Texas Engineering Systems, Graco, Halliburton Energy Systems, Stanley Tools, Lockheed Martin, Precision Autobody, and Sawyer Composites attending the event. Local media, UTA staff members, and residents attended as well.

Friday Shop Tour - For the early arrivals, we met on campus and gave tours of our shop, meeting room, and engineering office. We had 11 cars on display (with 7 more in another building) plus our HEV.

Friday Night Social - We hosted a social at my house for the attending teams. Best I can tell, there were about 70 folks that attended. We had food, FSAE videos, racing books, puzzles and games, and a whole lot of visiting.

Saturday Practice at UTA - On Saturday, we all met on UTA’s big parking lot for a full day of practice and driving experience. We challenged an FSAE-style track in the morning and an SCCA-style track in the afternoon. At noon one of our sponsors, Arnold Petsche, bought Texas BBQ for the group. We took group pictures of the cars and teams.

This year we did something that we have never done before… we invited the top driver from each school to take 3 laps in one of our recent cars. It was very interesting to us as well as the visiting schools. I think without exception, the drivers went faster in our car than they did in their own car in which they are more familiar and experienced… in some cases by as much as 5 and 6 seconds.

Saturday Morning Track - The track for Saturday morning was the 1998 FSAE endurance track. It was tight with a lot of cones to define the driving path. Best I can remember, the fastest time in 1998 was about 59 seconds. That was a competitive time for most cars this year, but the fastest time this year was 53 seconds.

Saturday Morning Course at UTA

Saturday Afternoon Track - In the afternoon, we setup a faster track that was more open and representative of SCCA tracks to prepare for Sunday’s event. It had the walls of death (which unfortunately were not too deadly this year), a Chicago box, and other typical features. In the high-speed sweeper, the aero cars approached 2 g’s.

Saturday Afternoon Course at UTA

Sunday’s SCCA Regional Event: The Carroll Smith Memorial - On Sunday, we all attended the monthly Texas Region’s SCCA Regional Autocross held on a concrete parking lot at a local football stadium (autocross.com/texasregion/). This event was named the “Carroll Smith Memorial” in honor of the FSAE chief design judge who was a regular at Texas Autocross and Texas Region SCCA events. We hosted several parties in his honor when he was in town and he got to know several of the autocrossers very well. In addition to giving his name to the event that corresponds with the Texas Autocross Weekend, SCCA gives an engraved trophy to the fastest FSAE driver at the event.

There were 33 FSAE drivers entered in the SCCA autocross out of a field of 170.