ELKHART LAKE (NBC 26) — It's the highlight of the year for the Ashwaubenon High School students that are involved in Formula Student - the chance to race at Road America.
The Wisconsin Formula Student USA Project gives high school students who are interested in engineering a chance to gain hands-on experience and try their hand on the race track. Every year, the Ashwaubenon students who participate in Formula Student build a car from scratch before they get to race it in their own competition at Road America in Elkhart Lake.
The cars are designed to resemble Formula One race cars and the students build everything in teams, even creating their own parts in-house. Noah Stroud, an Ashwaubenon senior who is also a team leader, says the role of the team leader is an integral part of the team's success on race day.
“They have to be able to tell their entire team like hey we need this done today, we need this done tomorrow," Stroud said.
“When you’re building, you just get stronger and stronger and you just start getting things done faster," said junior Nathan Metoxen.
The group builds one new car each year and the teams race it in addition to cars from years past. The students compete in their teams in a time trail race against other schools from across the state.
This year, Ashwaubenon's new car is called "P10". We got a look at it earlier this yearwhen we first did a feature story on the Formula Student group. Now completed, on Monday it was ready to race.
“As soon as you hit that break point you brake hard, turn in, and its honestly just an amazing feeling because you just have a lot of adrenaline pushing into you," Stroud said while describing what it feels like to race.
“You get more confident and the more confident you get, the better it is and the more comfortable you feel," Metoxen said.
Whichever team has the fastest overall time over the course of two days wins the competition. The winner will be decided Tuesday. Ashwaubenon's P8 team, which placed second last year, said they like their chances of pulling out a win.
"This year we know our car’s capability and we’ve improved on it, so I think we could take first place," said senior Wyatt Reinhard.
For more information on Formula Student, you can check out their website to see a list of all the Formula Student schools.
