FAU's SAE Racing Team Wins First Place at the 3rd Annual Formula SAE Match Race

The Florida Atlantic University Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) racing team won first place in the 3rd Annual Formula SAE Match Race at the Lamar County Speedway in Barnesville, Georgia. The event was sponsored by the Georgia Sprint Karting Association.

The FAU team entered the 2016 racecar, OR-16. The OR-16 reached a best time of 23.318 seconds, making them the fastest car at the competition and the fastest four-cylinder car.

"Once again Owls Racing has proven its dominance over big name schools," said Marco Cheraso, FAU SAE team president. "We continue to learn from our previous design which helps make the new car faster than ever."

From the 32-person team, 14 members attended the competition while the remaining team members worked on the design of the OR-17 and the OR-15 which will be used for new member training.

"It was a good demonstration of last year's design concepts which will help the team with OR-17's design," said Halle Mayne, FAU SAE vice president.

The team members that attended the Barnesville race were made up of all mechanical engineering students with the exceptions of Nate Cadet, an exercise science major; Blake Lewend, a history major; Mayne, a criminal justice major; Michael Simpson, an electrical engineering major and included Mathew Burgos, Cheraso, Bradford Davis, Dylan Kovar, Trent Ksionek, Obrien Lavin, Josh Mesnick, Alexis Ruiz, Steven Stanfield and Thomas Strickland. The team was also aided by team advisor, Oren Masory, Ph.D., professor of mechanical engineering at FAU, and FAU machinist, Fred Knapp. The team members that did not attend the race include mechanical engineering students Jeron Bornstein, Chris Branfield, Seth Chapman, Alex Conrad, Steve Gaillot, Kendrick Gauthier, Reed Goodman, Austin Licata, Jason Lin, Raymond Mathis, Jason Reyes, Ejay Valcin, Max Wellnitz; electrical engineering student, Stephen Lyons; neuroscience and behavior student Megan Caudle; pre-business student, Lunick Dorcelus; anthropology student, Melanie Maldonado; and mechanical and finance student, Richard Nelson.

The goal of the event is to help promote and advance an interest in engineering programs and to create a new venue for teams to compete at. Although the event was open to eight teams only five participated. The teams raced on a ¼ mile long course that averaged 20 feet in width and utilizes AMB timing equipment. The race consisted of a timed event of eight laps per car from a flying start, with the best of the eight laps qualifying for scoring.

Follow the team at owlsracing.com.