Momentum - November 2017 - 6

STUDENT
GENERATION

Making progress in the Endurance event at Baja SAE Illinois, 2017.

Teammates Max Drew, Alexandro Martinez and Mario Gutierrez pose with the
trophy for first place in Endurance.

ahead of him in position. After setting the fastest lap of
the race by a margin of over 14 seconds, Mario received
the checkered flag and was told over the intercom by
Branden that the car had moved from 28th to 4th place.
That put SDSU - Aztec Baja in 11th place overall.
Every competition that Aztec Baja had competed in,
they bettered their previous results. Baja SAE Illinois
would be the team's last chance at an Endurance
victory, and Mario's last drive of his Baja SAE career.
He'd had eight attempts across five seasons. At Baja
SAE Illinois, the team had shrunk to eight members,
due to many of the key members having committed to
prior obligations. Two of those were crew chief Elam
and second driver Lane. Mario would be driving all four
hours of Endurance himself.
Placing 14th in both Acceleration and Hill Climb was
not where the team was expecting to be on Dynamic Day
at Illinois. After a car came rolling end over end down
the K-rail drop-off in the Rock Crawl event, it was Aztec
Baja's turn. Mario took a very calm and conservative
approach at the course with intention to not hurt or
damage the car. The plan worked, with the SDSU team
becoming the first in the history of the event to make it
to the top of the rocky course. Ultimately, the sneaky #47
of Northeastern University was able to lay a faster time,
but second place was nothing to pout over.
Endurance was scheduled for the next day. Mario
started the car in 14th place and was able to move his
way through the pack to 6th in the first 2 laps. The first
fueling took less than a minute, thanks to Max Drew and
Alexandro Martinez making NASCAR pits look slow.
Mario was not taking any chances, knowing that a

problem-free race would produce a podium finish. Keeping the pressure
off his driver, fill-in crew chief Drew never informed Mario of his position
on the track, saying only "you're doing great, keep the pace." But it
didn't take long to realize Mario was doing just fine when car #123 of
SDSU caught and passed Michigan-Ann Arbor on the main straightaway not long after the first fuel pit.
Two more flawless fuel pits from Max and Alex and the countdown
to the finish continued. After driving at what Mario says was 60-75% of
the car's potential, the checkered flag was coming up quickly. After 63
grueling laps, Mario crossed the finish line and immediately questioned
the position they were running over the intercom. The reply was "You
finished first, Mario."
With tears of gratitude rolling off of his muddy cheeks, Mario
realized that what once seemed to be unobtainable due to consecutive
mechanical failures, was very much possible-and it just happened. The
second-place team finished a full lap down. Topping off a storybook
ending, SDSU cracked the top 10 Overall for the first time with an 8th
place finish.
This will not be the last word from SDSU, as Branden Elam is managing
the 2018 team. Their goal is to place in the top three for the Mike
Schmidt Memorial Award, which is given to the team with the best
cumulative score across the three annual Baja SAE competitions.

6 November 2017

Mario Gutierrez, who is a founding member of San Diego State
University's Aztec Baja SAE team and a recent mechanical
engineering graduate now employed by Tesla Inc., wrote this
article for MOMENTUM.

MOMENTUM

Momentum - November 2017

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