Bucknell Baja Racing Team Takes Custom-Built Car to Regional Competition

The Bucknell University Baja Racing Team will compete in Baja SAE New York June 11–14 at Hogback Hill MX in Palmyra, N.Y., showcasing not only a student-designed off-road vehicle but also a revised organizational model intended to strengthen the program for years to come.

Bucknell will be one of approximately 100 collegiate teams participating in the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) competition, which challenges students to design, build and race a single-seat off-road vehicle. Over the four-day competition, teams will undergo a comprehensive evaluation, featuring static and dynamic events emphasizing vehicle performance, the design process, business acumen and competition readiness.

Rather than operating solely as an annual College of Engineering Senior Design project — a capstone course in which seniors complete a major engineering project before graduation — the Bucknell Baja Racing Team now functions as a student club that allows participants from multiple class years to contribute to the vehicle's design, testing and construction.

"We changed our approach so it's no longer just an engineering Senior Design project every year. When those students graduated, we'd have to start all over again the next year," says Professor Craig Beal '05, mechanical engineering, faculty adviser to the team. "We started a Baja Car Racing Team as a club two years ago so students from any class year can now participate. We can now continue to build upon what we learned from the previous year and, potentially, improve the design process annually."

The new structure allows students to preserve institutional knowledge, refine designs over multiple years and provide younger students with hands-on experience before taking on leadership roles.

"First-year and sophomore students sometimes get to see why the coursework they are going to take in the following years is applicable through this experience," Beal says. "To get students to truly engage with their coursework, this is an opportunity where students are directly motivated to learn by their own interests. And it's a completely direct, hands-on experience."

Last year, Bucknell finished 44th among nearly 100 teams at Baja SAE Arizona. This year's team includes seven mechanical engineering recent graduates: Alex Crossing '26, Riley Bower '26, Adrina Iachini '26, Ryan Firko '26, Matthew Raudabaugh '26, Caitlyn Maruyama '26 and Erikson Brown '26. Underclassmen include mechanical engineering majors Nate Gutierrez '27, next year's club president; along with Daniel Atuma '29, Katelyn School '28 and Raphael Streitberger '28, and electrical engineering major Eli Foster '27.

As competition approaches, students are focused on testing and validation.

"Our team is putting the car through rigorous testing to make sure it is safe for the competition," says Firko. "Electrical and computer engineering team members are making sensors to test the structure better this year."

One of the team's younger members, Streitberger, illustrates the advantages of the new club-based model. The rising sophomore was the only first-year student to travel with the team to Arizona for the competition last year and has taken on a significantly larger role this year, welding the entire vehicle chassis.

"We started the process in January of this year and first came up with the structure in a month or a month-and-a-half," Streitberger says. "The initial creation of the shape took two months."

Streitberger first became involved after discovering the club at Bucknell's student activities fair.

"I did robotics in high school. When I attended the initial campus activities fair, I saw the Baja Car Team and that interested me," he says. "I started attending meetings regularly. By second semester, I was the only freshman who got to go to the national competition in Arizona. I took a bigger role this year."

For Iachini, the project provides a unique opportunity to apply classroom concepts to a complex engineering challenge.

"As a mechanical engineer, I've always been interested in mechanical design, and I've always liked cars. I've had a dream to have a Corvette someday," she says. "This experience gives me a great opportunity to learn about car design and systems."

The competition concludes with a four-hour endurance race that tests each vehicle's durability, reliability and performance under demanding off-road conditions.