The NC State University Pack Motorsports Formula SAE Team earned a top 10 position overall in the preliminary rankings of their first competition of the season, the 2022 May Michigan FSAE competition at the Michigan International Speedway.
The team won 9th place overall out of nearly 100 teams from all over the world. Additionally, they won 6th in Skidpad, 17th in Acceleration, 44th in Autocross, 8th in Endurance, 14th in Efficiency, 8th in Design, 25 in Cost, and 1st Place in the Cummins Innovation Award.
“Our experience in Michigan last week was nothing short of fantastic,” Pack Motorsports FSAE Powertrain Lead Jake Scinta said Friday. “However, nothing comes without its struggles. We passed static tech first try where judges review our car to ensure it meets the performance and safety rules of the event, but we faced issues when it came time for dynamic tech.”
Dynamic tech consists of tilt, noise and brakes. According to Scinta, the team had to solve issues in all three aspects of dynamic tech. In tilt, they had to fix fuel leaks on the spot, and the car almost lifted off the table at the full 60 degrees, meaning the car’s center of gravity was too high. In noise, the car was measured to be quieter at the rev limit than at idle, meaning the muffler system was not well optimized. It also took them a full day of troubleshooting and repairing to pass the brakes test. Due to an improper installation, the brake pads melted during testing so they no longer performed as they should and they were not able to lock all four wheels before swapping out to new pads.
The team performed extremely well in their design event, during which team members were asked to show their engineering knowledge as it applied to their car. They did well enough to qualify for design finals, during which they were questioned for over two hours about their theoretical knowledge of race car design, as well as more in-depth questions about optimization on their car. The team then completed their cost event, in which they described a real-case cost analysis of the automotive industry as well as reviewed their submitted cost report on the manufacturing of the car.
After Design and Cost, and despite previous difficulties, the team passed the Brakes event at about 1 p.m. last Friday, leaving them four hours to complete the Skidpad, Acceleration, and Autocross events. Both of the team’s drivers completed the Skidpad event with no issues, landing the team at 6th place in the category. However, the team experienced some difficulty in the next few events.
“Our first driver had completed 90% of his second run in Autocross before our fuel pump died. We rushed over to the fuel area, drained the fuel, pulled out the fuel tank, swapped the fuel pump, resealed the tank, and reinstalled the tank within an hour and a half of the pump dying,” Scinta said. “We then rushed over to pit lane where the Acceleration event is held and ran one driver through both runs. Knowing we had many points to make up in Autocross, we rushed back across the track and made it to the staging lanes before the 5pm end of day was announced. Even though our Autocross time we were left with wasn’t great, we still completed runs and got points from it.”
Despite their difficulties during this leg of the competition, the team came together to solve problems on the spot and managed to achieve the level perseverance for which the Motorsports Formula team has come to be known. 
Finally, the team competed in the Endurance event after a storm delay postponed the highly-anticipated event for nearly an hour. According to Scinta, the Endurance event most likely doubled the drive time on this year’s car due to lower testing time than previous years. Despite the intimidating at hand, Scinta said the team was confident in their designs and knew the car would finish. After the event, they noticed the car was running extremely hot, and their oil pressure sensor had died right before so there was no data from that sensor, adding an additional two issues to remedy before the next competition in June.
NC State’s Pack Motorsports Formula team will return to Michigan International Speedway from June 15 to face off against nearly 50 teams during the 2022 June Michigan FSAE competition. The following month, the team will head to Pittsburgh Shootout on July 9th at Pittsburgh International Race Complex to face off against another 35 teams.
According to Scinta, the team is ready to make the necessary adjustments to achieve great success at the next two competitions, and they are already hard at work solving the issues they experienced at the competition last week.