GT Motorsports News

After several years of "rebuilding," gt motorsports has returned to the top 10 in the Formula SAE competition, held this past week at Michigan International Speedway in Brooklyn, Michigan. The team placed 8th overall, out of a field of 93 collegiate teams from around the world.

The Formula SAE competition is an Engineering Education competition that comprises a blend of static and dynamic events, intended to challenge both the students' knowledge of their car's design, and, to challenge the performance and ruggedness of the car that they have built. In the static events, gt motorsports placed 27th overall including a multi-way tie for 12th in the design event. In the dynamic events, the team placed 7th overall, with critical finishes of 15th in autocross, and 5th in the all-important endurance/fuel-economy event (40% of the total points are at stake in the endurance event). The combined static/dynamic score led to the overall 8th place finish. This is the highest the team has placed since 2003 (4th in that year).

The accomplishment this year is all the more impressive to me because the team undertook a complete clean-sheet redesign of the entire vehicle. Fabrication of the chassis wasn't even begun until January, whereas in most previous years it would already have been finished by Thanksgiving. The dedicated members of the team invested a great deal of time to bring the car to a competitive state in time for the event, and the results are a credit to their efforts.

The top ten schools were:

Beyond the large contingent of teams from the U.S., teams from schools in Canada, Singapore, Venezuela, Brazil, Korea, Austria, and The Netherlands participated in this year's event.

gt motorsports was founded in the mid 80's by Paul Allen. Many, many students have participated in gt motorsports over the past years. These past and the current students thank all of the sponsors, faculty, staff, friends and parents who have helped and supported the team over the years.

gt motorsports is a volunteer organization, comprised of students from many academic units on campus.

Images from the event may be found on the team's website, http://www.gtms.gatech.edu/media.php

I'll also be posting a website with commented images; I'll send an announcement when it's up.

Ciao!

Ken
Faculty Advisor, GTMotorsports and GTOffRoad

The team is busy shaking down and packing up for our big Michigan competition. This includes chassis dyno runs, mock endurance runs, many rebuilds, and lots of tuning. Check out our Media page to see recent videos of the team in action.

Bosch has joined the GT Motorsports team as a major sponsor.

GT Motorsports is registered as car number 74 for the Detroit Formula SAE competition. For the VIR event, we shall be number 26.

We've launched a new website for the 2008-2009 school year. It will allow for more frequent updating, more information, and a greater amount of media. Check back frequently as features and content are constantly added.