Purdue SAE races to its best summer ever
Purdue SAE races to its best summer ever
These competitions are part of the Collegiate Design Series held by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE). For nearly 50 years, SAE has challenged students to race different classes of custom vehicles. Students spend the school year designing, building, and testing the vehicles, and then gather during the summer to compete against other university teams.
Purdue has three SAE teams. Baja SAE challenges students to design and build a single-seat off-road vehicle that can traverse and withstand various terrain and treacherous obstacles. Formula SAE requires the students to design and build an open-wheel internal-combustion Formula-style racecar that can accelerate and maneuver through autocross style racing. In Formula EV, the cars are powered using batteries and electric motors.
All three SAE competitions are structured similarly with static and dynamic events. During the static tests, industry experts scrutinize and judge every aspect of the car including design, potential business viability, and cost. Dynamic events test the cars’ performance through acceleration, maneuverability, and endurance.
"These design-build-test competitions provide absolutely essential experiences for students to develop professional skills that employers seek,” said Todd Nelson, SAE's faculty advisor at Purdue. “The SAE teams are, in effect, small engineering firms. Not only must students apply the technical skills they learn in the classroom to a very complex design problem, but it also requires them to manage a team of 50-75 students to meet a very tight schedule while managing a sizeable budget. It has all the aspects of what they will experience in their careers, and I don’t know of a better college experience to help them develop these skills.”
Purdue Baja SAE was the first to participate in an SAE competition in 1983. All three teams have had great success in recent years, but 2025 was a first: all three Purdue SAE teams finished top 10 in their respective competitions. "These results are very exciting, and I am extremely proud of these students,” Nelson said. “But what is more amazing, and something the results don’t show, is the students’ development. Through these teams, the students have developed skills that will allow them to pursue their dreams after graduation. Every graduating student I talked to received their first choice of job or grad school — I know this is because their employers recognized the excellence that comes from participating in an SAE team.”
Purdue Baja SAE
No team worked harder this year than Purdue Baja Racing. Not only did they build a successful single-seat offroad vehicle, but they also competed twice — and are planning on a third.
Students sacrificed their last week of classes to travel to Arizona and compete in May 2025. They finished 3rd in the dynamic events, and 7th overall out of 69 teams. But they still felt there was “more in the tank.”
They then traveled to Maryland in June 2025, and improved all of their results:
- Design: 4th place (highest ever)
- Business Presentation: 4th place
- Maneuverability: 3rd place
- Acceleration: 6th place
- Hill Climb: 8th place
- Endurance: 5th place
- Overall: 4th place (out of 98 schools)
Purdue Baja had won non-SAE sanctioned races in the past, but this is their highest official result in 42 years of SAE competitions.
“They came within a whisker of the podium,” Nelson said. “It all came down to the Endurance race, which is a brutal 4-hour wheel-to-wheel race that is extremely grueling for both the vehicle and driver. It has to be the most challenging collegiate design event that exists. Our car came very close to running the whole distance, but a wheel fell off with just a few minutes to go. The students could have packed it in, but instead they dashed back to the pits, fixed the broken wheel, and went back out on the track to complete two more laps before time expired. Only in Purdue Baja do you see something like that!”
Purdue Baja isn’t resting on their laurels. They plan on competing once more in 2025, traveling to South Carolina in October.
Website: https://www.purduebajaracing.com
Instagram: @purduebajaracing
Purdue Formula SAE
Every year, Purdue Formula builds a mini-Formula car powered by an internal combustion engine. The team has experienced podium success recently, but 2025 was a first for the team — in May 2025, they finished first place in the Design competition, beating out 105 other schools.
“The Formula team crushed it this year,” Nelson said. “It's hard to explain how much scrutiny these cars receive from the industry experts. They know how to effectively interrogate designs to find every mistake or inefficiency. This year, the judges admitted that they had a hard time finding anything to criticize! This car is 100% designed by Purdue students, and for it to be that good is a testament to all of their hard work, dedication, and teamwork.”
Among the other results from their May 2025 competition in Michigan:
- Acceleration: 3rd place
- Skidpad: 7th place
- Endurance: 8th place
- Overall: 6th place
- Purdue is the only Formula SAE team to finish top 10 in each of the last five US competitions
Formula students also made a unique personal sacrifice; their graduating seniors chose to attend the race rather than their own commencement. As such, Purdue organized an on-track commencement ceremony, where the Formula students wore caps and gowns and accepted their diplomas in front of the car.
Website: https://engineering.purdue.edu/fsae/wordpress
Instagram: @purduefsae
Purdue Electric Racing
The breakthrough success story of the year belongs to Purdue Electric Racing. Electric Formula cars are the newest of the SAE classes, and Purdue began competing in 2014. However, no Purdue electric team has ever successfully finished all static and dynamic events.
Until now.
In June 2025, Purdue Electric Racing finished 10th place (out of 85 teams), and successfully completed all eight events for the first time in their history.
“These electric vehicles have such a high bar for students to clear,” said Nelson. “They run off a 600-volt battery system, so there are way more safety and operational standards to meet before they even get onto the track. In SAE’s entire history, only 10% of Formula Electric teams have ever completed all events successfully. We’re thrilled that Purdue has now joined that elite group.”
The team finished strong at a variety of events:
- Skid Pad: 10th place
- Autocross: 10th place
- Overall: 10th place (out of 85 teams)
Their run ended with drama. During the final endurance event, cars must complete 22 laps of a bespoke road course at Michigan International Speedway. As Purdue’s electric race car rounded the corner at lap 21 ½, it spun out and wouldn’t restart. Some extremely anxious moments passed before the driver managed to restart the car and finish the race.
“All the students started jumping up and down celebrating,” Nelson said. “And as well they should. They worked hard all year on this vehicle, and all those late nights and weekends paid off in the end.”
Website: https://www.purdueelectricracing.tech
Instagram: @purdue_electric_racing
More Victory Laps
In many ways, 2025 is a banner year for Purdue Motorsports. Here are a few more of this year's highlights:
- Purdue’s Motorsports Engineering program in Indianapolis, the only accredited degree program in the country, enrolled more students than ever. They will soon move into Dallara headquarters in Speedway, just steps from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
- Susan Unser, wife of Al Unser Sr., established a scholarship to pay full tuition for selected Motorsports Engineering students.
- A Boilermaker alum could be found on every American-based IndyCar team at this year’s Indianapolis 500, as well as garages in NASCAR, IMSA, Formula 1, and more.
- The evGrandPrix go-kart race was won by an all-female team, the first all-female victory in 67 years of the Purdue Grand Prix.
- Purdue AI Racing, an IndyCar that navigates autonomously with no driver input, achieved a top speed of 159 mph! This year the team will compete in Las Vegas, Laguna Seca, and Italy.
“I’m so excited for the future of student competition teams at Purdue,” said Nelson. “We have such an enthusiastic group of students, knowledgeable faculty and staff, and a legacy of victory. But I’m most proud of the skills that these students develop, which ultimately enable them to pursue their dreams!”
Source: Todd Nelson, nelso366@purdue.edu
Writer: Jared Pike, jaredpike@purdue.edu, 765-496-0374