Formula One Racing has little cousin

AUSTIN (KXAN) - Formula One racing enthusiasts are all in a-twitter about the effort to bring the event to Austin , but there is already one Formula-style vehicle making laps on a track here. It's the University of Texas Formula SAE Racing Team's homemade car.

"You kind of get the experience of an F1 car, but a little bit tuned down," said team member Luis Hernandez, who is the aerodynamics team leader.

"It's considerably smaller and not nearly as powerful, a lot lighter, as well," agreed team member Micah Harbour, the ergonomics and safety team leader. "We don't get nearly as high of speeds."

Still, the engine makes plenty of racket and the car reaches speeds of 75 mph on the track at Driveway Austin, a racing school near U.S. Highway 183 in east Austin.

"The fact that it's close to F1, it bears that similarity, makes it, makes it just cool," said manufacturing team leader Matthias Daus.

Together with engine design team leader Pedro Viteri, the foursome gently rolled the car out of a trailer and fired it up for a run around the Driveway Austin track.

"You're about an inch off the ground and everything goes a little faster and open-wheeled," said Harbour. "It's just a lot of fun!"

Harbour was at the wheel for this run but each of the four has had an opportunity to drive the car at one time or another and all of them gush about the experience.

"It kicks you around a lot," Duas said. "You get down there and you really feel all the turns and you get pushed to one side, pushed to the other side. You step on the gas and your entire body rocks back."

The endeavor, though, is not just about having fun; it's about engineering.

Watching from trackside as the vehicle screamed by, Driveway Austin founder Bill Dollahite is impressed.

"What they learn is not just how to build better, more efficient vehicles, but how to work together as a team," he said. "I mean engineers don't work independently; they work together as a team. What really comes out of this is that they're building a system that solves a problem. That's what they've done with the SAE.

The SAE, or Society of Automotive Engineers , was founded at the University of Texas in 1981. It stages actual competitions between cars designed and built by student teams from more than 400 colleges and universities around the world. The teams race each other and compete on the basis of performance, mechanical design, cost and safety.

Dollahite, who was himself a professional race car driver for 25 years, reaching the peak of his career driving with the Ferrari, knows the value of budding engineers like these.

"Toyota recently had the issues with their sticking throttle," he recalled. "It was some engineer's responsibility to figure out why is that happening? What did we miss, and to reengineer that to make it safer."