Another Update, Courtesy of Scott Borg

Sorry for the lack of updates, we just checked in at a hostel withinternet. The Ferrari track was amazing, the competition was fierce,and it was a good time for everyone.

On Friday was the tech inspection. We were one of the first teams onsite, we arrived before dawn. At the U.S. competitions, teams have to get in line for tech. With a smaller number of cars, the tech scrutineers made their way around the paddocks, inspecting each car in their pit area. We passed tech on the first inspection, and quickly went back to the hotel to prepare for the presentations on Saturday.

We spent a lot of time preparing for the Design, Business, andManufacturing presentations. A few first-year members would bepresenting systems that had been designed by former students, so their veteran teammates spent a lot of time quizzing and coaching them.

We did very well on Saturday, placing 5th, 4th, and 5th respectively. Not all of the other teams were this consistent, so we were sitting in 3rd place going into the dynamic events, which would all take place onSunday. Another difference between the U.S. and Italian events was that all the race events are held on the same day. At the U.S. competitions,the Skidpad, Acceleration and Autocross events are on Saturday and the 20-lap Endurance race is held on Sunday morning.

Ferrari's track time is very valuable, so we were only allowed three days there. This meant that all the racing would take place on Sunday.In the morning, we were pretty fast on the Skidpad, but the officialtimes weren't displayed for spectators to see. After all the carsfinished the skidpad, the Acceleration event began. This was a nicechange from the US events, which run both events at the same time,forcing spectators (and team members without track passes) to miss outon half the events.

During the Accel event, we were able to seeofficial times, and there were at least three-to-five cars that beatus in that event. The most concerning team was TU Graz from Austria,who had done very well at all the other events so far.The autocross event was held before lunch, and again there were a fewcars that were running faster than us. Both of our drivers hit coneson some of their runs, incurring 2 second penalties per cone, butDustin's fastest run was clean.

During lunch we prepped the car for the Endurance race: we wrapped anyoil lines that might leak and cause us to instantly fail. We changedto a fresh CO2 tank, and were a little worried because our larger CO2tank had been damaged a few days earlier; we would be forced to usethe smaller bottle, which might not be enough depending on the courselayout.The Endurance race is always tense for everyone on the team: you haveabout 20 minutes to wonder if something you built in a hurry will failduring the race or not, or if parts will wear out at the exact wrongtime, or if the drivers (from our team or other teams) might make amistake and damage the car.

We finished the race, and both drivers aswell as the car performed well, and I think we impressed a lot ofpeople. A couple of the top teams had problems and didn't finish, sothat could only help our chances at bringing home a trophy. On theother hand, we had been consistently slower than a few of the teamsout there, namely the Germans from Stuttgart and the Austrians from TUGraz.

Going into the awards ceremony, none of the scores from Sunday hadbeen posted yet, so we had no indication of how well we would do. Tomake a long story short, we took 5th place, and although it's notquite a top three trophy, we are very happy with it. Our entire teamperformed very well; we gave some high-budget teams a run for theirmoney, but some of them were faster than us. We got to walk aroundFerrari's private race track, see Enzo's house, and imagine that theirF1 teams were hiding inside one of the big hangars, waiting for us toleave so they could get back to testing for the next F1 race.

In closing, thanks to all who have helped get us this far, and keepwatching Cal Poly because they're going to continue to improve and dogreat things. Look for photos on www.csupomona.edu/fsae andhttp://blogspot.cppfsae.com/ , they should be posted within a coupleof weeks.