WAR EAGLE MOTORSPORTS
AUBURN LADY TIGERS MINI BAJA TEAM
Race Report
Mini Baja 100, 1 - 4 June 2005, Green Valley, Arizona
In commemoration of Society of Automotive Engineers’ (SAE‘s) 100th anniversary, 131 teams competed in a 100 mile Endurance Race. The Auburn Lady Tigers Mini Baja team (ALTMB) proudly participated in this event. Once again the ladies struggled this time with only three members in the field, but the brand-new, restarted team hung on and fought hard, holding up to an 84th place overall finish at West.
SAE had been looking for a special way to celebrate the 100th anniversary in Mini Baja, and found it on Caterpillar’s Arizona proving ground where a very fast course with hard bumps brought Baja back to its roots in desert racing. The initial conception of the event was to make it separate, a fourth North American competition (besides East, West, and Midwest), consisting only of technical inspection and a 100 mile Endurance Race. Later, the decision was made to co-locate the West Competition, adding Design, Cost, and Presentation judging to the mix, as well as short running events (Acceleration, Land Maneuverability, Hill Climb, Rock Crawl). The site was Caterpillar’s Tinaja Hills Training Center, 20 miles south of Tucson, nestled in between the protected desert and the tailings of a huge ancient copper mine. It only took 30 continuous highway hours to get there…
Events followed the West Competition schedule, with Technical Inspection on the first day (no particular problem for either team, having already been through the East Competition) and Design Evaluation and Presentation on the second day. ALTMB placed 68th in Design Evaluation with 44 points. Oregon Sate won Design Evaluation with 78.5 points. Design Reports were judged before the opening of competition. Some points based purely on format compliance of the pdf version (hardcopies were also required). ALTMB turned in a hardcopy, but not the required pdf version (as did several other teams), and so made no points at all. Tennessee Tech won Design Report with 47 points.
Cost is scored on self-reported prototype cost, more points for a lower cost, with a few points awarded for the Cost Report itself. Reports are turned in well in advance, but scores are not assigned until a few of the cars have been spot-checked against their reports. ALTMB focused on efficient manufacturing this year and really wrung out their costs, though the cars do carry a good standard of equipment. ALTMB scored 39.28 points and 51st place. Akron won Cost with 49 points. Presentation is a Mini Baja event peculiar to West, and involves a stand-up effort to convince a mythical production company to purchase the team’s design. ALTMB played on a more level field, and played very well indeed. Considering that the team was inexperienced (only one veteran of ALTMB 04) and short-handed (only three team members on the ground in Arizona), with everything else they had to do, it is to our ladies very great credit to have pulled out 87.36 points and 25th place in the unfamiliar Presentation event. Captain Sarah Gallops, Carmen Heintzelman, and Christie Mardis put together a good show and gave a great performance. Oregon State won Presentation with the full 100. Static judging left ALTMB in 68th with 170.64, behind the leader Ecole Technologie Superieure (ETS) with 252.57.
As a Baja Competition host, Caterpillar has certain advantages. Plenty of their machines were around, and if any of the courses needed modification, then one of those articulated loaders with the 10 foot diameter wheels would come bouncing over, and drop a few loads of earth, creating a landscape that looked completely different. Playing to the crowd, Caterpillar provided a practice site and a few yellow machines to go with it. Teamers weary of tuning their Baja cars were welcome to try the controls of a loader, an excavator, a dozer, a backhoe, and a few other cool toys. The event courses were restricted to roads and in the cleared areas due to the fragile desert ecosystem in this area, and is consequently protected, so madhatting across the terrain was not allowed.
The short event day started with Acceleration on a 150 ft. course of loose gravel (the whole site was loose gravel). Sarah Gallops did the honors for ALTMB, pulling 54th with 76.08 points. Michigan, who designed and built their own continuously variable transmission (CVT), won with the full 100.
The Hill Climb was perfect. No one made it to the top. It was mostly loose gravel (surprise!), with a starting steep hump, a little leveling off area (less steep), and then the final push to the summit. The best car came close to putting the front wheels over the lip, but couldn’t quite maintain grip on the slippery up-slope. The best hill climb cars are rear-heavy for maximum traction, though rear-heavy doesn’t do well in handling events – one of Baja’s many design trade-offs. Christie Mardis drove for ALTMB, but had to struggle against the car’s design characteristics. A long final drive train to a somewhat flexible aluminum axle (as we would soon learn) set the car up for difficulties in keeping the final drive sprocket from walking itself out of the drive chain. Heavy loads and bumps tended to bring on this condition. Anyway, on the green, Christie gave it the torque, plunged forward 8 feet, and then the chain came off. 2.78 points (89th place) for the effort. The Hill Climb winner, Maryland, ground out 95.5 feet for the full 100 points. On to Land Maneuverability on a course that featured a bottom slalom, a stiff hill climb, a top slalom and whoop-dee-doos, and then a free fall (well, that literal description only applied to one of the teams) back to the start. Carmen Heintzelman drove for ALTMB and looked fast, but the chain slipped off on the top whoop-dee-doos, resulting in a DNF. ETS took the win in 56.217 seconds.
The Rock Crawl was too perfect. Not only did no one get to the top of the rock fall, no one even came close. Again, there was a starting challenge (loose gravel bed in front of the first row of 2 foot diameter rocks), and then the steepness over the same rocks increased with distance. Illinois stomped the field, wriggling out 40 feet for 50 points. Christie Mardis drove again for ALTMB, but once again the drivetrain couldn’t hold the torque, and no points were scored (tie for 90th). ALTMB’s drivetrain problems left us with 78.86 short event points, 86th best in the field.
Caterpillar created a rather different course for the 100 mile than is usually seen in Mini Baja Endurance Races. Since the course could not venture out into the protected desert, it was based on existing roads with creative hazards dug into them. Since these existing roads were designed for access only by Cat’s toys, one should not imagine a level highway here. The hazards, in addition to all the incline testing grades, included mogul forests, asymmetric berms (car-high), some really mammoth whoop-dee-doos (it’s amazing how much earth one of those mega-loaders can move), and plenty of hairpins.
The best (or worst) hazards were a series of gullies cut at 45 degrees to the course, which tended to be hit at full speed, and the trajectory of the car leaving the gullies tended to be uncertain (as did the trajectory of the suspension parts – not necessarily the same as that of the car they came from). The effect was a course that kept the cars fast and hitting the hazards hard – an excellent prescription for accelerated wear testing, and thus a magnificent measure of a car’s ability to endure. Not a good course for ALTMB though, given the car’s recent behavior. Christie led off, and the car was fast when it could come to speed, away from the 45’s and the big whoop-dee-doos. But these hazards popped the chain right off almost every time. After the relay the girls found themselves running at East, they decided that it would be best to send the driver off with a goodie bag containing all the necessary tools to fix any “potential” problems encountered on the track. Many Event workers later commented on the driver’s ability to get out of the car and quickly, calmly resolve the chain issue with little or no help. Later Sarah took her turn at the wheel. You know she was trying – she landed so hard after one of the moguls that the whole belly pan popped right off. But soon enough it became clear what the rest of the afternoon would go like, and so rather than hold up traffic on every lap, ALTMB graciously retired after 4 laps (8 miles), collecting 24.490 points and 84th place.
ALTMB racked up 273.99 points to place 84th. The overall score and placement proved no cause for celebration, but the hard work and persistence of the ladies did leave a mark. Many of the course workers would later visit the Auburn pit area to offer their complements to the team for the strong effort and ability shown by the three lady tigers.
The 100 mile race drew a lot of attention from the Mini Baja competitors’ field, and far more teams trekked to the concurrent West Competition than usual. Of the West top ten, ETS, Queen’s, Michigan, and Auburn are predominantly East Competition winning teams, while Wisconsin, Purdue, and Louisville (finishing in the top ten for its first time ever) concentrate on Midwest Mini Baja. Oregon State, BYU, and Oregon State #2 are the top three from last year’s West Competition.
Auburn usually only goes to the East and Midwest Competitions, but the 100 was a special event not to be missed