Heartbreak in Romeo

Cardinal Formula Racing team suffers late breakdown, misses top ten finish

by Jason Wolverton
Vanguard News Editor

June 26, 2006 —

During a weekend filled with the sound of race engines, it was the silence that said everything. With tears dripping down their sunken faces, they pushed the car they had spent months building, tweaking, and repairing to their team trailer at the Ford Proving Grounds in Romeo.

The number 8 car had done everything they asked it to. It had put them in position to be champions.

And then it just stopped.

Teammates hugged, cried, and stood around the car that had gotten them so close. It appeared none of them knew exactly what to say, so no one said much of anything at all. Above, a noisy stunt plane broke the silence, twisting and turning in a sky that had been filled with rain for most of the weekend. Slowly, eyes that had been fixed on the gravel turned to the sky, a momentary far off distraction from that which they had been so close to.

On May 20 during the Formula SAE World Championships, the car slowed down during the sixth lap of perhaps the most important race in Cardinal Formula Racing (CFR) history. Teammates lined along a fence bordering the track watched helplessly and held their collective breath as cars from opposing schools were waved past and continued on.

Hundreds of yards away, at the far end of the stands, a race official would come over the address system and announce that there was a problem with the SVSU car. Too far away, the team didn't hear the announcement but didn't need to. The car had come to a dead stop on the track right in front of them.

It was the clutch that caused the car to stall. Team manager Hussam El-Jobran said they had noticed a problem with it about five minutes before the race.

What they thought was a case of too much fluid in the system turned out to be excess air, a tiny air bubble in their hydraulic clutch. Regardless, it was too late to do anything and five laps later, CFR watched as a year's worth of work stalled before their eyes.

Faculty advisor Brooks Byam gathered the team for a brief meeting after the event. "Well folks," he said, "that's racing."

Failed Expectations

Endurance Economy is the essential race in the seven-event World Championships. One driver races eleven kilometers before the car is pulled off the track and carefully inspected. If inspectors find any problems - leaks, breaks, smoke - the car is disqualified - something that happens often, since only 47 of this year's 129 registered teams received any points in the event.

If things do check out, a second driver races another eleven kilometers and the race time and the car's fuel usage is recorded. The event is worth 400 of a possible 1,000 points, meaning the CFR team knew as soon as the clutch failed that their hopes of winning were over. They finished 41st overall.

What made the breakdown especially painful was that many of the top teams fell alongside them; the University of Western Australia, the University of Wisconsin, the Air Force Academy, and last year's world champion Cornell also failed to finish Endurance Economy.

"What's really hard is that the door was wide open," Byam said. "A lot of teams didn't finish and all we had to do was finish."

More painful yet, CFR had held its own during the previous events, finishing in the top 16 in Skid Pad, Autocross, and Acceleration and putting the team in good position to finish strong.

"We had placed very well in all the other events," El-Jobran said. "Going into endurance, our point score indicated that we could be in the top five, maybe even the top three."

El-Jobran's estimation was dead on. Immediately following the World Championships, CFR hosted its own Grand Prix at SVSU. One of the participating teams was the University of Florida, which finished second in Endurance and eighth overall in Romeo. At the Grand Prix, SVSU went head-to-head with Florida in a race that puts the car through conditions comparable to that of Endurance Economy and won.

Had they been able to pull off the same feat in Romeo, CFR would have finished third in the world.

Looking forward

The team's attention now turns to next year. With another year of experience they will try to balance the disappointment of losing with the learning opportunities that come with it.

Still, Byam has preached to the team that hard work and preparation isn't always enough and that results are needed to be successful.

"There's only so many times you can say, 'we learned a lot.'" Byam said.

Still, Byam and the team were able to take many positives from the event and its subsequent second place finish at the Grand Prix.

During that race, SVSU and Western Australia again suffered breakdowns. Despite the set back, SVSU stayed up all night fixing their car while Western Australia gave up and pulled out. To Byam, that showed the character the team possessed, working through another difficult moment when one of the world's top programs gave in.

"It was kind of therapeutic," Byam said. "It showed us that we can do it and we're on the right path."

El-Jobran agreed, admitting that, while the experience of coming so close was crushing, it was still an experience worth having. "For a group of people to devote so much time and effort into something and then to see all their hard work crushed, it was very difficult," he said. "Having said that, we still do feel pretty lucky and grateful to be part of this program. This was an opportunity of a lifetime, and most of us would not wish things otherwise."

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