Maddy Posner – Co-Editor-In-Chief

Photo taken by Maddy Posner

The Foothill Engineering and Technology program, or FEAT, won first, second, and third place across three teams in the 13th annual UCI Energy Invitational on Saturday, May 6th.

The Energy Invitational is a Vital Link competition program based on designing, building, and then racing an electric car. This year, there were ten schools with twenty teams competing at UC Irvine. Foothill’s three teams were divided into the “youngers,” or sophomores, the juniors, and a team composed of seniors, juniors, and a sophomore. The mostly senior team, also known as Foothill Custom Car #13, took home first place, while the sophomores — Car #12 — finished second and the juniors, Car #88, finished third.

Foothill’s FEAT program is a STEM-based pathway in which students explore a variety of courses based in engineering, manufacturing, and design. Mr. Cooper is the director of the program, and Mr. Shell works in engineering and design aspects of it as well.

Racing teams had been building up to the UCI EI throughout the year, beginning as early as September. Initially, teams had to design and map out the whole project in 3D software on the computer. For Car #13, the building process actually began in December, by Brandon Wachner, Project Leader, and Evan Jensen, Welder.

Jensen learned how to weld specifically for the racing project. He said, “Picking up welding, learning it for a month and then putting [the car] together was quite . . . different.”

The process included hours spent after school messing with the welding machine, figuring out the settings and planning different elements of the process. “After a while it became second nature,” explained Jensen.

Mentors came in to work with FEAT students in specific areas to aid them in the process of constructing the cars. One such mentor worked with jensen on Tungsten Inert Gas Welding, or TIG welding.

“I don’t even know how to TIG weld. It’s hard, especially what [jensen] did. But we had an outside welder come in, and just work with him and train him on that skill,” said Mr. Cooper. He attributes the aid of outside mentors to part of the reason Foothill students were able to do so well in the competition this year, as the mentor set enabled the students to do machine work.

Come competition day, the first half of the day was spent on inspections before competitors walked the track to see the high points or look for potholes. Then, the second half of the day was spent racing.

“Race day was pretty nerve wracking,” said Wachner. “We did our first test run, and everything broke. I sheared the bolt in half, tightening it down too much. The electronics all cut out. We got no data. So we were just frantically, during our lunch break, trying to fix the whole thing,” he explained.

The team managed to fix their car, as they had brought a workbench, anticipating potential difficulties. “We had to do a lot of redneck engineering,” said jensen. Obviously, they must’ve done something right, because they won. And by a significant amount, too.

In earning points, judges consider both power and speed. Teams primarily aim to win the race, by being the fastest car, but the competition also promotes using less power. This can help balance out budgets, as funds can provide speed but considering power requires more skill.

Wachner participated in the competition last year as well, his team winning first place, but not by a significant margin. This year, Foothill secured the first three spots, and was

enormously ahead in terms of points. “[Between] first and fourth, the difference was like 600 points. It was tremendous. We beat Tustin High by 60%,” said Landon Thorpe, another member of Car #13.

There was even a relatively significant gap in points between Foothill’s juniors, the third place winners, and Tustin High at fourth place. As for the reason behind this difference in points, there are a couple different explanations.

Wachner said, “We have like twenty custom components on the car, that other schools just can’t make.”

Mr. Cooper believes it starts all the way at the district level. “We have Dr. Litfin, who puts a big emphasis on CTE . . . he develops very strong programs.” He thinks it was more of a combination of different factors. “I think it was the skillset through the program and a lot of the machining, and then that mentor set that really enabled them on the machines,” he said.

FEAT students learn how to machine parts in their junior year. As such, the sophomore team, Car #12, did not have this skillset in hand for the competition. Supposedly, this gives the juniors and seniors a huge advantage, but the opposite is actually true.

“One of the requirements of the juniors is they had to machine all of their parts in duplicate and then give them to the youngers,” said Mr. Cooper. “So the youngers actually beat the juniors, but they largely beat them with technology parts that the juniors made,” he laughed.

The sophomore team, unburdened from focusing on the machine aspects of their car, could then prioritize other things. “The reason that they did better is that they then spent their time perfecting their car set-up and driving their car a ton, whereas the juniors were making all these parts,” Mr. Cooper said.

Junior Saahil Sinha, a member of Car #88, was one of the ones to undertake the task of machining new custom parts. “The most significant improvement that I contributed to the cars was a ‘freewheel’ system, which helps mitigate how much energy is lost to motor friction,” he explained.

Regardless of the work he put in, Sinha thinks that Car #13 deserved to win. “The seniors worked tirelessly on their project, and those hours clearly paid off,” he said.

The first place team won a one-week internship in July with Gustafson Brothers Automotive, an auto repair, mechanic, and auto body shop in Huntington Beach.

Next year, some of the members of Car #13 will have graduated. The team(s) that replace them will likely use their work as a basis upon which to improve. According to jensen, “Next year they’re just taking our car as a base and adding more — or taking away stuff — that is needed.”

“It’s just cool to know that your hard work has contributed to something bigger, to winning a competition,” said Wachner