After a year of relentless work building a racecar from scratch, the WSU Formula SAE team got a taste of Indy Racing May 19, coaxing its mini Indy style Car #19 through four days of grueling events at the Pontiac Silverdome.

The sprawling Silverdome parking lot was alive with the sound of highly tuned 600cc horsepower revving engines, the smell of 100 octane fuel, and the colors of 134 college racing teams from all over the globe for the 2004 Formula SAE competition. It featured a kilometer-long endurance event with head-to-head racing, an acceleration event, and a timed autocross event. Cars raced against the clock on courses designed to test acceleration, handling, and cornering abilities.

For the endurance event, up to six cars race through the twisting course at the same time, but competitors are allowed to pass one another only when the slower car is flagged into the passing area to let the gaining car through.

This was the first year of competition for the Wayne State team. Many schools return year after year with experience accumulated from the past. The Society of Automotive Engineers started the Mini-Indy in 1979. This was the precursor to the current Formula SAE, which began in 1981 and provides students with substantial latitude in engineering the chassis, suspension, and powertrain of their vehicle.

Both new and veteran school teams spend more time pushing their cars than driving them. The teams tinker for hours, tweaking and coaxing engines, often in haste to get them running for the next event. And although they are in competition against each other, teams constantly share spare parts and equipment. The public address announcer doubles as an on-air bulletin board, making requests for parts and tools ranging from screws to seat belts. Advice is also cheap and plentiful. College teams may be fiercely competitive, but all engineering students share common interests and camaraderie.

Some members on the Wayne State team managed only a few hours sleep a night during the last few weeks before the competition, making final adjustments to the car. It is not uncommon for Formula SAE teams, especially those coming from overseas, to pull all-nighters, said Steve Yaeger, corporate communications and brand manager for SAE. "They were sleeping in trailers and on the ramps in the paddock area."

For the Wayne State team, the first performance event on Friday was Car #19's first road test in the car's final configuration. The team had replaced the snappy gold carbon fiber frame with the racing white one plastered with numerous sponsor decals. After a long frustrating morning struggling with an engine-starting problem, driver Jim Fudym was able to run #19 through a series of pre-tests and compete in the acceleration event. It barely made the next event - the brake-skid competition - before it closed.

"We're still working on the right idling speed," said Captain Dmitry Frankstein, a senior Electrical and Computer Engineering major. It turned out later that the engine started right up after expensive spark plugs were replaced with a set of cheap ones at the advice of another team.

On Friday afternoon, Driver Ryan Tait produced a good result for Wayne State in the autocross event despite water that remained on the course after a two-hour delay caused by a storm front passing through southeastern Michigan.

Despite a low score on paper - 96 out of 134 teams - the car impressed judges and onlookers. "A lot of people said this car does not look like a first-year car," said Michelle Grimm, associate dean of academic affairs and the team advisor. "It's more solidly built and more aesthetically pleasing than most first-year cars."

Wayne State managed to compete in all four dynamic events as well as the three static events, which judge the team's ability to present and support reports on their design, its cost, and possible marketability of the vehicle. "Just participating in all four events is an accomplishment that we are proud of," said Grimm. "Only forty teams managed to complete the endurance event, which traditionally is a very difficult event for all teams."

The Wayne State car completed half of the endurance event before a drain on the battery prevented them from restarting after a mandatory driver change. Wayne State placed ahead of top universities such as Lehigh, Columbia and the University of Maryland, and ranked third out of eight teams that had never competed before.

For next year, Frankstein wants to substantially cut down the total weight. Wayne State Car #19 weighs 646 pounds, while the highly competitive entries weigh around 500. For their first car, the team emphasized durability and strength, and did not realize how much performance would be sacrificed, Frankstein said.

"They've learned a lot, and made lots of notes," said Grimm. "They are in a good position to apply their new knowledge and experience to design an improved and more competitive car next year."

The number of teams competing this year was the largest in the history of the event, said Yaeger, who was surprised at the number considering the difficulty of the preparation involved. Most of the rules address safety and engine size, but are wide open regarding everything else, he said. "They've got to make an awful lot of design decisions. People get to April and say, "We're not going to have a car." The pressure is intense for all teams - but even more so for those who have traveled from as far away as Australia, Venezuela, Singapore, Japan, Korea, and Europe.