Dartmouth's F-1 Races Ahead

By Christian Bateson | Wednesday, October 23, 1996

Talking to Thayer engineering students Jeff Giberstein '95 and Chris Dorros '97 about the F-1 racer, it's impossible to not get excited about the half-size racecar. Built and raced by Dartmouth and Thayer engineering students for the first time last year, Dartmouth F-1 placed second out of the 15 'rookie' teams in the Formula SAE competition held by the Society of Automotive Engineers — a fitting reward for a project founded by a few tenacious Dartmouth students and backed by two receptive alumni.

Dartmouth's F-1 racing team was born in 1994, when Jeff Buck '95 was in the machine shop at Thayer. He overheard a few people talking about Formula SAE racing, and remarked that it sounded like a great thing. Too bad, they said, Dartmouth doesn't have a Formula SAE team. Buck's interest was piqued, and he decided to start a team at Dartmouth. 'Jeff's a very motivated guy, and a good leader as well,' said Giberstein of Buck. Buck had no financial resources, but he started talking to people around campus, and his enthusiasm for the project proved to be contagious.

Buck contacted Will Boddie '68, a Thayer alumnus and Vice President of Ford's European operations. Buck stressed the educational benefits of the project, and in the spring of 1995 a check arrived from Ford. Since a number of Thayer graduates go on to work for Ford, the company was making an investment in its future. As Dorros stated, 'auto companies hire Thayer students every year, and if the student has hands on knowledge from something like the F-1 project, he has a jump on everyone else.'

Buck spent the summer of 1995 working for Charlie Nearburg '72, who owns Nearburg Exploration, an oil company in Texas. Nearburg sponsors a Formula Atlantic racing team, and is a big racing fan. Buck learned a lot about racing that summer, while working for Nearburg's pit crew. By the end of the summer, Buck had won Nearburg's supportive ear. Nearburg Exploration matched Boddie's contribution. Meanwhile back in Hanover, Giberstein and three other students were hard at work on an engine they had bought. Giberstein had been planning to get a job over the summer, but when the check arrived from Boddie he changed his plans. He decided to stay at Thayer to do his senior engineering project over the summer. He designed the project so he could get course credit for the racer. Giberstein and his friends stripped down the engine and began designing a new fuel system. They threw away the carburetors and started from scratch, building their own fuel injection system.

When the '95 fall term commenced, Buck returned to Dartmouth and the project gained momentum. The team had grown from ten members to over thirty. The team pressed forward with the work, looking forward to the competition the following May. Alison Japikse '95 was a key ingredient in the team's success. Japikse, a fluid mechanical engineer, singlehandedly designed a new intake manifold for the engine, putting in long hours coming up with a design.

While Doug Fay, the chief metallurgist at Pinetree Castings, was taking classes at Thayer, he heard about the project. Pinetree Castings is owned by Ruger, a gun maker and another company excited about racing. Ruger had helped other college teams with projects, and Fay offered to help in any way he could. Japikse made a plastic model of her intake manifold, and showed it to Fay, who offered his company's facilities to assist the team. He took the model to Pinetree, where it was cast in aluminum.

All the members of the team continued to labor on the car, designing and building all of it from scratch. They were hampered by space restrictions, doing all of the work in the subbasement of Thayer. 'The subbasement used to be basically a huge junkyard,' said Dorros, 'and last year we did a full cleanup on it.' Thayer has a serious space problem, and the team was thankful for the space they had. The administration was very helpful, as they worked with Buck and got several professors to advise projects related to the car.

Nonetheless, many teams have advantages over the F-1 team. Cornell's Formula SAE team receives $60,000 dollars every year for their car, while the F-1 team had an operating budget of only $22,000. Also, some teams have a machine shop for their automotive work that is bigger than the one for the entire Thayer school. Thayer is a relatively small school, and simply cannot offer the resources that other schools can.

Despite all those factors, the team managed to finish construction on the car by early May, just in time for the competition, which was held at the Pontiac Silverdome in Detroit. 'The last month before the competition we were putting in 16 hour days the whole way through,' recalled Giberstein, 'so that when we got to the competition we could relax and enjoy it.' Eleven team members made the trip to Detroit, five of whom drove in the competition. Giberstein and Dorros were accompanied by drivers Buck, Zander Lichstein '95, and Neils Verbeek '95. There were 85 teams competing, with teams from all over the US, as well as entries from Canada and Puerto Rico.

The first half of the four day event was spent with the judges — employees of GM, Ford and Chrysler. A cost analysis presentation came first, followed by the engineering design presentation. Next the car had to pass safety inspection, and was subjected to a noise and braking test.

Having impressed the judges, the team was ready to do some racing, and they spent the next two days doing just that. The first event in the competition was an acceleration contest, and the F-1 made a good showing. The brakes were tested next, as the team took part in the skid pad event. Finally they got down to the racing, with an autocross event in which they drove 2 laps around the 3/4 mile course.

The last day of competition featured an endurance race, a 15 mile race with a pit stop and a driver change in the middle. There was one heat in the morning and one in the afternoon, and the better of the two times was taken by the judges. 'The F-1 racer's biggest strength is its reliability, which is the most important thing in the competition,' commented Giberstein, and the car held up well throughout the four days, experiencing no problems that could not be remedied.

At the end of the competition the results were tallied, and they were impressive. Along with its 2nd place rookie finish, Dartmouth F-1 was one of just 36 cars to make it through the entire event without breaking down, and Dartmouth placed 39th out of the 85 team field. 'It's just a rock-solid vehicle,' said Giberstein, and the long hours the team members put into the project made it all happen.

Giberstein and Dorros are not looking back, though. Already they are prepairing for this year's competition, which will be held in mid-May. The rules of Formula SAE racing state that a team can race the same car two years in a row, but that it must be 'heavily modified.' The F-1 team is planning to take off everything and restart using last year's frame. This year they will design a new engine, new body, and everything else. 'Our job this year is to look for flaws in the vehicle,' said Giberstein. Dorros believes they can make the car 100 lbs. lighter than it was last year through better engineering and the use of composite materials.

Last year's success sparked a lot of enthusiasm on campus, and this year there were 45 people at the first team meeting. Currently the team is working on the car on the loading dock behind Thayer, but with the onslaught of the New England winter they will disassemble it and carry it piece by piece into the subbasement for reassembly. Already they have started having driving sessions at Thompson Arena and are planning to race the car at New England racetracks in the coming weeks. The team is currently in the middle of fundraising operations for the new car. This year the team has a budget of $32,000 and they are still a long way from their goal. They've been talking with Nearburg, their 'corporate advisor,' and look forward to the work they have ahead.

Giberstein has a sparkle in his eye when he talks about the new car. 'We want to simplify,' he said, 'and there's a certain elegance with which you have to approach that. Otherwise you're going to end up with something that's going to break. We are going to take something that people in the racing business do by the seat of their pants, and we are going to break it down to a science. That's the way we think because we're engineers.'

Dartmouth's F-1 Races Ahead

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