The Cal Poly Pomona (CPP) Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Baja Car Competition Team placed 6th overall in a tough field of 90+ collegiate competitors at the Bellingham, Washington event.  This marks the third year in a row that CPP’s outstanding Baja Team successfully placed in single digit numbers at this challenging, annual Design, Build, Race Competition.  A Cal Poly Pomona Baja team took first place at the 2008 competition in a large field of 115 entrants – a hard feat to duplicate.

This year’s  Pomona team built a great looking machine, (shown here on a trial run) similar in design and appearance to that of the 2008 winning car, except for sporting the #9 numeration depicting last year’s overall event placement.  Always fast, this year’s Baja Car placed in the top 10 during the acceleration portion of the competition, and ran a very fast maneuverability time on the first run, before rolling over on the second.  No damage was done, save a bit of pride.

The Baja event entails detailed technical inspections followed by design and sales presentations the first day before dynamic events begin.  The latter activities include separate acceleration, maneuverability, hill climb and rock crawl competitions by all off-road vehicles designed and built by university student teams from all over the world. (See photo of this year’s competitor car lineup shown here)

The final event was a grueling 4-hour endurance race with cars starting four across and lined up according to their respective acceleration scores from the previous day.  Cal Poly started 16th amongst the 88 cars that had endured prior individual dynamic events, and CPP drivers fought their way to finish a remarkable second behind a “very fast” Canadian team.    In other words, the CPP team left 86 other international teams “in the dust” upon completing the endurance event.  The overall 2010 SAE Baja Car Competition winner was the team from Rochester Institute of Technology of New York.

According to SAE Faculty Advisor Professor Cliff Stover, this was an excellent finish for the 2010 CPP team (shown here at the Washington competition with a muddied car).  The check they will receive for high placement overall, will allow student team members to recoup some personal costs that are always associated with such collegiate competitions. 

All Cal Poly Pomona SAE Competition Teams do their own fundraising, so private sponsorships and donations are greatly appreciated.  Anyone interested in supporting these student “hand on learning” opportunities, may contact Faculty Advisor Cliff Stover at: cmstover@csupomona.edu or College of Engineering Development Officer, Chuck Varela at: cdvarela@csupomona.edu .  The next SAE Competition will be the Formula Car West event, which is held at the California Speedway (Fontana) on June 16-19, 2010.  Come out and support the Cal Poly Pomona engineering teams.

May 2010

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