Here are the pictures of the uprights that Alex e-mailed out. They're sooooooo pretty!

Bernie chose to take on the pedal box through fall quarter. There are a ton more pics in the gallery. For those unfamiliar with pedal boxes, it's just a sliding tray that holds the gas pedal and brake pedal in place. It should be adjustable to accommodate people of different height (since the seat is stationary), and it should be very stiff while as light as possible. For more details, e-mail Bernie at brihn "at" stanford.edu.

Now that the brunt of our work is construction, we're hitting the PRL pretty hard. Want your picture on the website? E-mail Alex about work sessions and make a mess in the PRL (and then clean it up).

Several of the parts for the car have been newly modeled, updated, or re-modeled in solidworks. An updated full chassis pic and a couple pics of the pedal box model are up in the gallery.

Alex, Chris, and Bernie went out this weekend, got a couple air drills, and after some difficulty getting enough air out to the paint shed, sanded away until the PRL closed, and then painted a couple coats of primer until late in the night. Alex and Chris came back the next morning and threw another coat on. More pics in the gallery.

The team showed up in full force at the Stanford Activities Fair. Alex had printed a bunch of nice, color fliers that we hope will attract a lot of people to our next info meeting. Hopefully we can get some young team members some experience this year, so that when we leave, they can carry the team into future years. More pics in the gallery.

Chris went down this weekend to pick up the finished chassis. It looks great! It’s ready to be sanded and painted.

Stinger Chassis has completed the chassis, and it looks beautiful! Alex and Chris went down to place the engine in the right place in the engine bay so that they could weld engine mounts onto the frame. It should be done by next week. More pictures are up in the gallery. Thanks Stinger!

Alex, Chris, Brian, and Bernie went down to Stinger Chassis this weekend to give Richard the model of the chassis so they can build it. It should be done in about three weeks.

Stinger Chassis, famous sprint car chassis builder of Hanford, California has agreed to sponsor SFR. They'll be building our chassis in August. Thanks Stinger!

TW metals has agreed to provide Stanford Formula Racing with much of the bar and sheet stock that is required for assembly of the car. They have everything--go check them out.

With high hopes of being able to compete in Formula West 2007, the Stanford Formula Racing Team made the trek down to Ontario, CA to see in person what other schools had engineered. While it was scorching hot, the trip was more than worth it. We got hundreds of pictures of different suspension setups, uprights, drivetrains, pedal boxes, design presentations—everything worth noting we recorded. A sampler of the pictures that we took is up in the gallery, but a full archive of all the pictures we took is available on the ftp site. If you don’t have access and would like access e-mail brihn at stanford.edu.

Needless to say, the competition was a great show despite the heat. Red Bull Racing showed up, along with several other sponsors. Bill Mitchell was there giving several of the teams advice. It was really cool to see him in person--the man behind the software that we use.

Our continuing thanks to the University.

Ian Wright of Wrightspeed stopped by MERL so that the Stanford Formula Racing Team and various ME research groups could check out his electric Ariel Atom. Needless to say, the car was beyond impressive. It weighs 1500lbs and has a 150kw motor (~200hp) linked up with an Acura RSX transmission locked in first gear. Thanks to an electric motor setup by AC Propulsion that gets its peak torque almost immediately and revs to 13,300rpm and an ingenious traction control system that you could only implement on an electric drive system, it accelerates 0-60 in 3.1 seconds. Check out the videos on their site--it royally wastes a Ferrari 360 Modena and Carrera GT. Many more pictures are up in the gallery.

The pics of our GSX-R are up in the gallery. Alex took these just before the second mock chassis construction.

After two weekends of building a second mock chassis around our Suzuki GSX-R, we're close to having a finalized solidworks model. The feedback from the mock chassis helped us position our steering rack better for driver ergonomics. Also, because we had the engine to work with, we were able to see whether our rear box sizing would work in reality with our sprocket sizing and chain angles.

After two long weekends, the pictures from the second mock-chassis build are up in the gallery.

A friend of the team designed an SFR concept car in 3D Studio Max. It's pretty slick looking, and it gives those unacquainted with FSAE a good idea of what a formula car looks like. Check it out:

Fluor, one of the world's largest publicly owned engineering, procurement, construction, and maintenance service organizations, has generously donated stage II sponsorship to the Stanford Formula Racing Team. Fluor has ranked No. 1 four times on FORTUNE magazine's America's Most Admired Companies list in the "Engineering, Construction” category. Thank you Fluor!

Thanks to the Musk Foundation for pledging stage II sponsorship. Several interesting details about Elon Musk can be found here on Wikipedia. You'll notice in his interests that he owns a McLaren F1 and an Aero L-39 jet trainer. SpaceX was the third company Musk founded in 2002.