About Us
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Liberty Motorsports strives to uphold a culture of excellence and inspire innovation in order to develop the next generation of high performing engineers that honor and glorify God.
In Fall of 2017, students Andrew Mann and Jared Darius along with Liberty University’s Dr. Hector Medina set out to establish a Formula SAE team at Liberty. Throughout the Fall semester, the three researched the competition, other teams, and the work necessary to create a team. After compiling the research, they presented a proposal for the project to the Dean of Engineering at Liberty University where the project was approved. The following semester, Andrew and Jared recruited a team of 11 students to be founding members of the Formula SAE team. Over the summer of 2018, the project took off with Hendrick Motorsports agreeing to support the project and the team growing to 35 students. With the focus of the automotive industry shifting towards electric vehicles, the team chose to establish a project that best prepared the students for the future of the industry. Although the electric vehicle competition is a technically demanding undertaking, Liberty Motorsports aims to be on the forefront of the technology. In a broader sense, the project was established to better equip students at Liberty University for their future. The project is aimed to simulate a real world engineering design experience as closely as possible. Students will learn valuable engineering experience through solving complex problems throughout the design, manufacturing, and optimization of an electric racecar.
What is Formula SAE
Formula SAE is a worldwide student competition hosted by SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers). The competition focuses on students’ ability to design a compelling and
cost-effective Formula 1 style racecar for your “weekend racer”. Designs are judged based on aesthetics, innovativeness, engineering knowledge, cost, and a variety of speed and handling events. In recent years there has been an increased focus on electric cars, so SAE started Formula SAE Electric where students can design an electric racecar. The teams range from MIT, UPenn, Texas A&M, Stanford, and many others. The electric competition is a bit smaller due to its young life and technical complexity. There are only about 30 teams that compete each year with UPenn being one of the top teams in the US.