UTA Racing on Display in the Arlington Community
UTA Racing is out in the Arlington community with multiple featured displays.
The A-Modified (A-Mod) car is on display at the Arlington Museum of Art in support of the Arlington Indy Car Race, taking place March 13-15. They will also be displaying one of the FSAE cars at the Junior Achievement Expo on March 4.
UTA Racing has won the Formula SAE event hosted by the Society of Automotive Engineers eight times in the United States and has won in England, Australia, and Japan. The FSAE cars are an open-wheel formula-style race car with about 70 horsepower weighing about 400 pounds without driver. A new car is conceived, designed, analyzed, and built every year. Then the students need to learn how to drive it fast.
The rules for the competition are somewhat open, giving the opportunity for creativity from the students. Their car could be very simple with a small engine and a simple frame, or could be a large turbo-charged engine, with wings. Both extremes can make points in the rules.
The UTA team is volunteers of students ranging from freshmen to graduate students. Some students can get course credit as a senior or graduate student. UTA also has a certificate in Automotive Engineering available to team members.
The team uses several computational aids to help with the design before they build it. All parts are modeled in 3D using SolidWorks. Stress analysis programs can find the lightest frame and suspension members without breaking. A virtual computer wind tunnel can analyze how well the wings produce downforce and drag. A kinematic analysis program can determine how to make the wheel go up and down without changing the angle of the wheel in bump and roll.
In 2021, UTA Racing built a car to compete in the Sports Car Club of America’s national solo event held in Lincoln, NE. There are numerous classes ranging from stock to modified. The top class is A-Modified. There are very few rules for this class, and all cars are purpose-built prototypes.
The UTA A-Mod racecar weighs the required minimum of 900 pounds with driver. It has a Suzuki GSR 1000 cc motorcycle engine with 225 horsepower and wings capable of pushing the car to the ground with about 565 pounds of force at 60 mph which will allow the car to go around corners pulling more than 2 g’s.
The first year it competed in the SCCA National Solo Event, it won by 8 seconds in which a typical winning margin is 0.1 seconds. In 2024 it won by a 4 second margin. It was the fastest car out of the 1324 in attendance making it the fastest autocross car in America.
