Kansas State’s Powercat Motorsports hosted Formula Wheat, a racing competition for colleges across the Midwest, on Saturday, Oct. 4. This event allows motorsports teams to “gain experience and hone their driving skills in the acceleration, autocross, skidpad, and endurance events,” according to the Powercat Motorsports website. The team and seven other teams joined the competition.
Anish Rastov, founder of Formula Wheat and K-State alumnus, explained the type of cars being raced.
“They’re called Formula SAE, which, in layman’s terms, is the equivalent to Formula 6, meaning that they’re powered by a motorcycle but they’re all student-designed and built,” Rostov said.
The competition consists of four different events that put the car to the test. Carter Cygan, the team’s chief engineer and senior in mechanical engineering, describes the Skidpad event as a figure eight acceleration that is a 75-meter drag race. Autocross is a cone course that serves as a qualifier for the endurance race, an 11-mile event. Finally, acceleration measures the car’s ability to travel 75 meters, the fastest time earning the win.
Members of Powercat Motorsports spend months designing and building their car to take to competitions, starting all over again each year, Cygan said.
“We start designing the car right when we get back from the competition in the summer.”
The team manufactures the car using many different techniques.
“We built about 90% of the car in-house at K-State,” Cygan said. “We utilize welding, sheet metal fabrication, 3D printing and other forms of manufacturing to build the car.”
Senior in mechanical engineering and president of Powercat Motorsports Tyler Calgren said people often don’t realize that building a race car requires a significant amount of time and energy.
“A race car doesn’t build itself in a day; most of us are in the shop 40 hours a week or so doing whatever it takes to get it done,” Calgren said. “There’s a lot of time and effort that goes into it that not everyone sees in the videos on Instagram.”
This year, the team faced challenges when the car malfunctioned during one event, but they were able to troubleshoot and achieve success.
“We started off the day with Skidpad, and the car was all over the place and then died,” Cygan said. “We got those issues sorted out, and then we went in and set the fastest time in the day in Skidpad. It was a huge comeback.”
Their comeback demonstrates the real-life applications of Powercat Motorsports, Charlie Slothower, sophomore in mechanical engineering and the chassis design leader, said.
“When you get into the car, you get to apply everything you learn in the classroom to real life.”
The victories and comebacks that took place this past week at the event come at a time when the team has been placing well at large competitions.
“I’m super proud of our fourth-place finish at Michigan out of 108, which is a huge international competition,” Cygan said. “That’s the best this team has placed in many years.”
The successes are no doubt in part because of the team’s strong bond, Slothower said.
“We all work really well together to build a really good car; we’re all bouncing ideas off of each other. It’s just a great atmosphere,” he said.
Rostov said the positive team dynamic makes building the car and racing a rewarding experience.
“This team works because everyone has a unique background,” Rostov said. “We have business majors, psychology majors and secondary education majors that also made the team — it wasn’t just engineering majors. Their involvement with the team gives them opportunities and a family.”
Vance Weber, former president of Powercat Motorsports and K-State alumnus, said Powercat Motorsports is about more than putting engineering into practice.
“We build a race car, but at the end of the day, it’s not about the race car,” Weber said. “It’s really about how people develop over the years that they’re on the team. There’s some people on the team that have come in as freshmen not knowing what they’re capable of, and now they have a lot of confidence to go out in the real world and try to achieve something. Formula SAE is about building people.”
