Purdue Baja Racing Team: Building The Ultimate Off Road Racecar

The Purdue Baja Racing Team spends a year designing, building, testing, and finally racing an off-road vehicle. Preparing the car for competition gives us the opportunity to apply the concepts we have learned in class to a real-world problem, using design techniques including CAD, CAM, and FEA, and excelling in teamwork, planning, and advertising.

In 1983, Purdue Baja Racing was established as an elite design course to encourage a better and more comprehensive understanding of vehicle design amongst Mechanical Engineering seniors. Today, Purdue Baja Racing is now entirely student-run by a team of over 50 members, ranging from freshmen to seniors. The team is overseen by Professor Andres Arrieta Diaz and Professor Francisco Montalvo, the SAE Advisors from the School of Mechanical Engineering, who guide students on best engineering practices. Overall, the team has grown in quality and quantity, consistently placing in the top 10 at competitions and quickly making its way towards being consistently in the top 3, after recently placing in 1st place and 2nd place at competitions this year.

This project is important to donate to because it supports the performance of one of the nation’s most competitive collegiate racing teams while preparing our members to work in industry. Our team just won the Mike Schmidt Memorial Award for having the most points across all three competitions in 2026. Now that we’re number one, we have more eyes on us than ever before. To continue this success and stay competitive, we need to keep improving the design of our racecar and our manufacturing and fabrication techniques. At the same time, we want to continue giving our members experience that leads to their individual success beyond competition.

We intend to use the donations received to support the purchase of supplies (engines, hardware, etc.) and shop equipment (tools, fluids, etc.) for our new racecar. We also intend to use the donations to support the expenses associated with travelling to 3 competitions yearly, which is a significant portion of our budget.

Purdue Baja Racing doesn’t solely exist to win; while that is certainly a main goal of ours, we also exist to develop the technical and professional skills of our members. Members gain hands-on experience designing parts to be machined and assembled, while simultaneously learning to manage projects and collaborate with other members to integrate parts from different subsystems. Without donations, we would have fewer opportunities to provide our members with industry-level experience in Computer-Aided Design (CAD), Finite Element Analysis (FEA), machining, welding, additive manufacturing, and electronic data acquisition systems, as well as valuable skills in teamwork and leadership. Donations allow us to provide our members with the resources and opportunities they need to develop these skills.