By Nathan Inman
Clemson Formula SAE (CUFSAE) is hitting the ground running this semester. With multiple competitions under its belt, CUFSAE is already seeing success through the early portion of the semester.
Just days after the semester officially began, CUFSAE started off on the right foot on Aug. 21 and 22 when the team traveled to Summit Point Motorsports Park in West Virginia for the Pittsburgh Shootout. Team lead for CUFSAE, Kyle Jobman, spoke to RHBSSI to detail the early accomplishments.
“We had two competitions already, one at the end of August, the Pittsburgh Shootout up in West Virginia. We placed fourth out of 25 there for internal combustion,” Jobman said.
In addition to placing fourth overall, the team placed third in the south autocross competition and fifth in the north autocross.
The rubber then hit the road at the Michelin Laurens Proving Grounds in Laurens, South Carolina. There, the team placed third overall with a first-place finish in the skidpad competition, second in the internal combustion, and third in the acceleration and endurance events.
Jobman said he anticipates the team will compete in one more competition later this semester as it shifts its focus to the design and completion of its 2027 build. He added that the competitions so far have given CUFSAE multiple opportunities to test new components before building next year’s car.
“It’s been very helpful,” Jobman said. “We actually, at LPG, ran a test with two water pumps for our cooling system, because we’re looking at adding two water pumps this year. So it was helpful to get that data and actually see if it would be beneficial to us.”
Jobman also mentioned that the team has looked at data on other elements of the car, which has allowed them to identify additional areas for improvement.
Alongside the competitions and ongoing design of CUFSAE’s next build, the team has also been hard at work recruiting new members.
“Recruitment has been very good,” Jobman said. “I think after all the recruiting events, we had about a little over 120 new members join the team. We’ve been getting them a bunch of new-member projects to get them kind of into the flow of how we do things as a team.”
Jobman added that for the team’s final event of the semester in November, there is no cap on the number of members allowed to attend, giving new members their first taste of live competition.
CUFSAE was also a recent beneficiary of RHBSSI’s awarding of funds to multiple Clemson student motorsports organizations, which, Jobman explained, will help the team immensely as it begins planning for its major Michigan competition in May.
“That $2,500 will definitely go towards helping us out a lot,” Jobman said. “We’ll probably end up buying competition tires with that; those usually come in at about $1,000 a set. So we’ll probably end up buying two sets of those, and that’s really helpful for us because, going into Michigan, we want to have a fresh set of tires. And then obviously testing leading up to Michigan, we want to use a fresh set of tires there, too, so that should help us out there.”
With a hot start to the semester for CUFASE, the team is only just getting started, and it appears that the sky might truly be the limit.
