Dream of the Furious: SHSID’s GT Racing Team Get Great Results in the National STEM League

SHSID’s GT Racing Team recently attended the Ten80 Student Racing Challenge of the National STEM League.

Every year, hundreds of students around the world ranging from Grade 9-12 participate in this competition. In this competition, teams of 8-10 people form a racing team to compete for the championship. Each team has a period of several months to prepare and make their teams ready for the final rounds.

Regional rounds come first. Also, during this time, teams can complete online reports that will earn extra points for their team. In the final round, 300-400 students compete in New York. Each team can make modifications to their cars, and buy tools for their own team In the next year, SHSID’s GT Racing team will attend the Rover Challenge, UAV, and the Computer Science Challenge.

The Ten80 Racing competition doesn’t only benefit students by teaching them knowledge related to engineering or science, but also cultivates the group work spirit of students. After months of hard work writing business plans, holding speeches, and meeting with different people from different companies, the GT Racing club has strived to become a fully-developed racing team.

Engineering is the greatest and most important section of the National STEM competition.

The team investigated the mechanics of their car and tried to modify and tune it. In many situations, they improved the speed, acceleration or the handling of their car. First of all, the team investigated aerodynamics. By using physics knowledge acquired from textbooks they had read, as well as from races watched in real life, including NASCAR, Formula one, Le Mans, etc., the team proposed several plans to improve the aerodynamics of their car body. They tried to add a splitter, spoiler, side skirts and diffusers to increase the downforce and decrease the drag force of their car, which are the two goals of aerodynamics.

A splitter is a device extended from the nose of the car to make air flow over, instead of under the car. This creates a vacuum under the car, giving it more downforce by sucking it down and in turn, generating more grip. Similarly, the side skirts prevent air from entering the underside of the vehicle from the sides. The diffuser makes air flow from under the car body more smoothly, generating less drag. On the other hand, the spoiler spoils air flow over the car, so that more downforce is generated. Using the application ‘Wind Tunnel’, the team tested the forces for each model and add-on to the car. After testing and tuning, they made the models and used a 3-D printer to make them in real life and install them on the car so that their car would have more grip through downforce, and can travel faster with less drag force.

Through further experimenting and researching during the race day, the team figured out how to tune the camber, toe or ride height based on track conditions. They also learned how to tune the car based on weather, or track temperature, more specifically. Also, they learned how to change their car from a racecar into a dragster, a car that gives maximum acceleration on a straight track. Creatively, the team developed a new method for energy conservation. By using solar panels, they were able to conserve all the energy they needed on a sunny day to charge up their batteries efficiently.

The team gave presentations, made speeches, and more importantly, raced in the competitions. They tested and tuned their car to perfection. Justin Tong, the driver, tried his best to get to the front of the pack, and won fourth place in the race. The team also participated in a car-body show, as well as aerodynamics wind-tunnel testing. Under the leadership of experienced crew chief and leader Gabriel Zhang, the engineers, Jerick, Tim, and Andy tested and tuned the car to perfection.

The team learned a lot through this competition. The learned persistence, creativity, and teamwork. Persistence is definitely required for winning in the competition. When the team is training and is in the competition, the team will face challenges, which cause extreme stress. At that time, a persistent team will proactively face the challenge and solve it, while one that doesn’t will not succeed. Another quality the competition wishes to promote is creativity of the students. It is really important that the students don’t only do the best in the competition, that they also deploy innovative ideas that nobody ever used in the past. The team, for instance, used the solar panel to conserve energy. The last quality learned is teamwork, which is also highly important. This competition is not an individual competition; it is a team competition that requires everybody to get together and form a single, united team full of passionate people.

(Written by Gabriel Zhang 9(9), Vincent Chen 9(4), Justin Cui 9(6), and Calvin Guo 9(7) Supervised by Sophia Yang Photos by the GT Racing Team)