OU hosts Australian team before FSAE competition

Students from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology come to OU before the Formula SAE competition to fine tune their car.

By Rebecca Wyatt Thomas, OU Web Writer

Walking into the Formula SAE garage on campus, a group of students works on their car, making final adjustments before the Formula SAE competition on Michigan International Speedway May 14-18. Only these aren’t OU students. They are from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia and they are one of three international teams that OU will host before the competition.

“We have come here every year. We love hanging out with the OU guys and even though the competition is quite a ways from the university, we still thought it was worth coming to OU,” said Lee Mitchener, a member of the Australian team.

OU also hosts teams from Finland and Austria.

The Australian team did not come to OU in 2007 choosing instead to participate in the competition in the United Kingdom, which they won. This year, that competition is being combined with the Formula SAE competition so the Australian team is defending their world title.

The students from the teams learn from each other as they socialize and interact with each other in the garage.

“We learn about the technology involved in each country,” Mitchener said.

The team shipped their car to OU and is in the process of fine-tuning and testing it before the competition.

Members of the Australian team arrived May 1 with other members joining them on May 8. The students are primarily engineering students in their third and fourth year of school. The team has 11 people working on the car for this event, but a full membership of nearly 80 students.