Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls, the Society of Automotive Engineers, SAE Baja, and of course... The University of Arizona and the College of Engineering...

Welcome to the 2008 Beta website for the University of Arizona SAE Baja team :: UA Baja Racing. This is a great time for our team as it is for you, our faithful followers. If this is your first time joining our team, greetings and salutations from all of us at UA Baja.

If you are surfing our site and find something wrong, something that doesn't quite float your boat, or if you just have a suggestion, please email Andrew (smock@email.arizona.edu) with your input. This is the beta version of our 2008 website. Some pieces are still coming together and over the next few weeks things are likely to shift around.

As most of you know, Baja at the University of Arizona has historically been a Senior Design Project with no longevity and no team turnover from year to year. Consequently, no knowledge was passed on and no team members stuck around to recruit new members for future teams. Our past vehicles were often replicas of previous vehicles that our University produced resulting in less time needed for design work.

Last year, in 2006, that all changed. A handful of underclassmen set out to create a new team that would establish a new normal for involvement in engineering. This team was young, fairly uneducated with respect to high-level engineering courses, but they were full of energy. They all had decent knowledge of automotive mechanics, simple stress analysis, and metal fabrication. It is safe to say the the knowledge that this new team entered with was one quarter the knowedge that they finished the year with.

They designed a vehicle from the ground up, attempting to be innovative rather than immitative. The team went out on a limb to try new things with frame design and a four-link rear suspension. The rear suspension fell through the cracks when funding ran dry mid year. The design work was all shelved and the team was forced to recycle parts if they were to make it to competition. Consequently, the rear suspension switched from four-link to dual independant a-arm setups using some components from an older vehicle.

Getting to competition at the South Dakota School for Mines and Technology was a huge accomplishment in the year of this young team. Going through technical inspection at competition was one of the greatest experiences for the three teammates who venture to South Dakota. The team had to go through tech three times, each time an inspector would find something new to fix. First, it was two support members to add to the frame and a few hardware issues. Second, it was safety with respect to drivetrain guards. After some solid work from all three guys the team passed tech.

The highlight of our vehicles performance in competition was when Matt did a full frontal roll coming down off of a six foot dropoff. The vehicle did a full somersault and kept on driving. Tech, of course, flagged Matt down to check for safety but he was good to go. The best part is, Arizona State University's team from the Polytech. campus caught the whole roll on film! Booyah!

The 2007 UA Baja Racing team met a lot of great people at competition and made a bunch of contacts with other teams, both local and foriegn (yay Conestoga from Canada and P.R.C. from Korea!). After the competition was over the team felt like they had been through a hurricane. There was so much to digest, improve upon, and lots of work cut out for next year.

This summer the team is working to raise maximum funding for the 2008 vehicle. Don't miss out on your opportunity to donate your tax dollars to a team with some crazy design conceptions for 2008. Fabrication will start in the fall after design and fundraising is complete.

The new website is pretty self explanatory. If you are interested in joining the engineering sensation that is :: ua baja, check out the page for joining. To see our current members, click members. Likewise for sponsoring ua baja, viewing media, and checking out results from competition. If you have any questions feel free to contact our team.

Thank you to all of our families, friends, and sponsors that supported us through the 2007 race year. We couldn't have done it without you.

Copyright 2008 UA Baja Racing :: University of Arizona :: Tucson, AZ 85719