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Race to the Top!
Cornell University’s Baja Racing Team is an undergraduate engineering project team focused on designing and building an off-road vehicle for the Society of Automotive Engineering (SAE) Collegiate Design Series competitions. Our team was founded in 2003; since then, we have grown enormously and have had top 10 finishes for the last 8 years. Our ultimate goal is to design, build, and test a single seat off-road vehicle to race at SAE sponsored events. In a highly competitive field with over 100 teams, we must develop an entirely new car each year, with huge improvements over the previous year. This year, we will be taking our best car yet to all three Baja SAE events.
This Year
Our team this year is made up of 47 students from 14 different majors and we pride ourselves on having a 50% ratio of women to men as well. We will be building the 17th Baja car of our team called OD18. We are excited to say that we will be returning to all three competitions: Baja Baja SAE Rochester and Baja SAE Tennessee, later this spring, and SAE Arizona in the fall. The Baja SAE competition this past year had started its transition into a four wheel-drive competition. After this year's season, all Baja vehicles must have an operational four/all wheel-drive system to compete. We did a great job implementing the system last year, and we plan to work even harder to perfect this newfound experience.
About the Competition
Cornell Baja SAE Racing is an engineering project team which annually designs, builds and races an off-road vehicle to compete in the SAE Collegiate Baja Design Series. By encouraging hands-on engineering and project-based learning, Cornell Baja takes engineering out of the classroom (and onto the track) for 40 students annually. Each year, our research moves through 3 stages of review before our design is finalized: Preliminary Review, Critical Review, and Final Review. During this time, we’re also modifying our older cars, so we can test new designs on prior years’ vehicles. Following our final review, we move to our build phase. Each year, we continue to innovate and improve—redesigning even the smallest components. We balance hard work with a passion for our car, and we think that passion really makes the difference. The competition requires students to balance design and cost with dynamic performance while following a strict set of safety guidelines and standardized rules. There are three North American competitions annually, each with 100 competing teams. The competition is broken down into static and dynamic events.
Why it Matters
By building the best car in Baja, we hone our engineering skills to a razor edge, and show the world that Cornell has the best and brightest engineers. Being on Cornell Baja Racing is a testament to that fact; if we can win Baja competitions, we can do anything. With the experience our members gained on Cornell Baja, many of our alumni are working on the cutting edge of technology. As we continue to improve our cars, we also improve ourselves so that we will be ready to join them once we graduate.
A donation to our team will help us meet our goals and further our engineering education. We hope that this campaign will afford the next generation of Cornell Baja engineers the invaluable opportunity to learn outside of the classroom. Not only will a donation to our team help us with new member education and our future success but also help tremendously as an investment to our lab space, travel cost, and manufacturing costs. Donated funds will help us enhance the capabilities of our custom-built engine and transmission dynamometer, purchase badly-needed sensors for testing and tuning, and bring in new equipment essential for our extensive manufacturing. These items are some of the missing links in our efforts to develop the most intelligently designed Baja vehicle to date, but with your help, we can achieve our potential.
By donating to Cornell Baja Racing, you’ll be helping us develop the most talented engineers, not only at Cornell, but in the entire engineering industry.
Thank you for your support!
Visit our website to learn more: https://baja.mae.cornell.edu/index.html
Facebook: facebook.com/CornellBajaRacing
Twitter: twitter.com/cubaja
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cornellbajaracing/
Our fellow student engineers are our daily support network and any help from you is appreciated!
A donation of $25 would allow us to purchase basic lab supplies including nuts, bolts, gloves, brushes, seals, and organizers that we use on the daily.
A $50 donation allows us to buy stock material such as tubing and sheet metal that are critical to building the frame, drivetrain, suspension, and unsprung components of our car.
A $100 donation can buy us ball bearings, gears for our driveline, a CVT drive belt, and composites molding materials. It can buy us a one major component of the car.
A donation of $200 will allow us to purchase electronic components for our Data Acquisition System (DAQ), a critical component for testing and the redesigning process.
A contribution of $500 will help buy a team member a flight ticket to competition, an integral and rewarding culminating experience to every member of our team at the end of our academic year. We hope to have every member be able to attend at least one competition to see the results of all of their countless hours of hard work over the course of the entire year.
A contribution of $1,000 will help pay for lodging at one competition.
A donation of $5,000 will fund one of the following: entire stock supply, fund all of the flights to competition, all lodging costs at competition, competition registration fees, and advance our budget greatly.
A donation of $10,000 will greatly advance our budget to make investments in newer, better machines that allow us to carry out innovative improvements for not only our car, but the education of all of our members.