Traveling 450 miles to the great white north of Houghton Hancock is no easy trip.

Despite hav­ing only four vet­eran mem­bers, Ferris State University’s Baja team fin­ished eighth out of 46 teams at the Winter Baja event in Lake Linden.

Led by auto­mo­tive pro­fes­sors Gary Gage and Ben Upham, the 12-member team made the trek in the frigid weather and blow­ing snow to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Teams from Michigan, Wisconsin, South Dakota, Illinois and more com­peted in the event, which was hosted by Michigan Tech.

“The travel is long and tir­ing, but the auto­mo­tive expe­ri­ence and test­ing of our cars is cru­cial in prepa­ra­tion for our annual sum­mer Baja event,” said Gage.

Each year the Baja team designs, fab­ri­cates and con­structs a new car for com­pe­ti­tion while keep­ing one of the cars from the pre­vi­ous year. Since the team’s fund­ing is lim­ited, one of the old cars is often scrapped and parts are used uni­ver­sally between vehi­cles. Gage and Upham advise their stu­dents on issues through­out the process, but the stu­dents do the work. This allows them the chance to learn tech­ni­cal, hands-on oper­a­tions and to func­tion as a team, often repli­cat­ing what their expe­ri­ence in the work force will be like upon graduation.

Although the “big air” por­tion of the event was elim­i­nated this year, the endurance race remained the same. It con­sisted of two heats, both two hours in length. The object was to make as many laps around a track designed to shake, rat­tle and roll each team’s Baja style vehi­cle. Ferris’ team switched dri­vers about every half an hour, while hot pit­ting to fuel up and secure any loose ends on the car.

“Team cap­tain Sam Westendorp did an excel­lent job of mak­ing sure that the guys that worked the most on get­ting the car ready drove first and for the longest peri­ods,” said Gage.

The team com­pleted 58 laps between the two heats. Central Michigan won the event with 69 laps com­pleted. The flow of team­work com­bined with com­pe­ti­tion prepa­ra­tion exem­pli­fied the sat­is­fac­tion for the team’s over­all eighth-place fin­ish at this year’s event.

“The team is grow­ing and we have some young mem­bers, but these kids are sharp, eager to learn and will­ing to try new things,” said Gage. “Both pro­fes­sor Upham and myself are extremely proud of the guys.” n

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