College Baja Racer Team Gets Ready for International Competition in Wisconsin

For four years, a team of mechanical engineering students from Old Dominion University's Batten College of Engineering and Technology has worked to perfect its Baja racer.

It's a car that students build, basically from scratch, to test out applied mechanical engineering principles on a one-person off-road vehicle.

Blake Bristol, who graduated from ODU in December 2008 and now works at Dominion Virginia Power, continues to lead the team, which is off again to the latest Baja Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) contest in Burlington, Wisc.

Bristol said the contest started out as a way for him to enjoy his "gear head" impulses.

"As time passed, it has become more of a challenge to design and build a Baja that performs better than other university teams," Bristol said.

"It's very rewarding to be able to fabricate a mobile vehicle from just a pile of tubes and a box of parts."

Bristol added that knowing their vehicle's humble roots, it makes it extra satisfying "to actually see it drive under its own power, because as a team, we know we built a quality Baja through our hard work."

And Bristol said the competition's value is in seeing how their ideas match up with other Baja teams from around the world. "The competition allows everyone to meet, and trade ideas for future engineered vehicles."