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Formula SAE team: Enrique Chavez, Chris Lemons, Ricardo Valdez and Takashi Kaneko

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Formula SAE race car student design team members Enrique Chavez, Chris Lemons, Ricardo Valdez and Takashi Kaneko speed toward the checkered flag

When the checkered flag came down and the smoke cleared at Fontana’s California Speedway, CSUN’s race car was cooling its wheels in seventh place. At the annual Formula SAE West race car challenge, that is no small feat: more than 80 universities from around the globe send their best and brightest teams to compete.

Northridge was the only California State University campus to make the top ten in the spring 2007 competition, sponsored by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE). Keeping it company were Purdue, Auburn and Texas A & M.

"To place seventh among all of these prestigious schools who are known for their engineering programs really puts CSUN on the map," said mechanical engineering alumnus Pablo Olmedo, 2007 team captain.

In the competition, student teams face off in events such as skid pad, acceleration, autocross and endurance. Formula SAE faculty advisor Stewart Prince said students also get “a taste of real world scrutiny” by making design presentations and “sales pitches” before technical engineering judges.

Adding to the elation over its Fontana showing, CSUN’s team has been invited to display its Formula SAE vehicle at SolidWorks World 2008, the world's largest annual 3D CAD (Computer Aided Design) event, set for San Diego come January.

Javier Arias, brake system engineer on the 2006-07 team and now a design engineer with Avibank Manufacturing Inc. in North Hollywood, believes a first place Formula SAE West win is not far off.

In the meantime, he said, mechanical engineering students who choose CSUN’s Formula SAE senior design project as their design requirement for graduation will quickly begin engineering careers, as he did. "We have one of the best engineering lab facilities in Southern California."