Racing, rivalry, innovation: Erick Shoesmith on what drives Iowa State’s Formula SAE team

Erick Shoesmith, junior in mechanical engineering, is on Iowa State’s Formula SAE team, where he and his teammates use their engineering skills to build and race cars.

“Each year the Formula SAE team designs, builds, tests, and competes with an open-wheel, formula-style race car. We dive deep into every aspect of the engineering process with the goal of building the most effective racing machine possible and beating over 200 universities from around the world in internal combustion and electric vehicle categories.

We attended one local competition hosted by the Kansas State University Formula SAE team. Although it was a small competition, K-State is a formidable opponent and took 10th of 120 teams in the internal combustion competition last season. This was our chance to see what our car could really do, and we put up a good fight!

With no aero kit, our car was at an immediate disadvantage to theirs. But we held our own, finishing within eight seconds of K-State over a 20-minute-long endurance race, and beating them in another event.

Overall, we took 2nd place, but the story of CR-28 is far from over. We have many improvements planned and will be bringing it to the major competition in 2025 with our sights set on the podium!

We are very proud to perform at the highest level we are capable of, and show off across the country what Cyclone Engineers can do.”