IOWA BAJA: OFF TO THE RACES!
Iowa Baja is a group consisting of mainly mechanical engineering students, but we are open to students of all disciplines. As a team, we work collaboratively to design, build, and test off-road buggies which we take to numerous competitions around the United States. Each year we attend a small handful of regional races where we take our previously constructed buggies. At these races, we try to take as many members as possible and get them some time behind the wheel of our buggies. The first race we attended this year was at UW Stout in Wisconsin. Stout threw
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in a little twist and had a six-hour endurance race, typical races are four-hours long. At the end of the six hours, our oldest buggy placed 1st and brought home a trophy! This past February, we traveled up to the U.P. of Michigan to Houghton and raced on Michigan Tech’s campus in the snow with the same 3 buggies we took to Stout. For their dynamic event, a driver started on one end of the track and drove about 200 yards through technical maneuvers. Once through that, the driver stopped in a small box, shut off the buggy, exited the buggy as quickly as possible, then tagged a team member beside the box. That team member then ran 50 yards to a