Fuel Future Engineers: Support Foothill Racing Club
Donation protected
Our current model frame for the car
My name is Joshua Dai, and I'm a member of Foothill Racing Club. Foothill Racing was started as a passion project between myself and 3 other friends, and slowly more and more people joined until we were at the 13 people we are at right now. The entire reason why this club came into existence was due to the monotony of school projects. They were never challenging enough and so rigid that barely any creativity could be expressed. We wanted something that really pushed us to our limits, something that would help us finally have fun in the subject we all wanted to have fun in: engineering. This was how Foothill Racing Club was born.
In this club, we could put our heads together to make whatever we wanted. Build rafts out of scraps of wood, use blow dryers to help us bend the metal we wanted to build with, designing an elaborate sorting system for different types of grains, or whatever silly and fun thing we wanted to do. This freedom cannot and likely will not ever be present at the high school level simply because of the curriculums they have to follow, making Foothill Racing Club so valuable to budding engineers like us.
We eventually wanted to branch out past the silly projects we had been doing. One of the other founding members, Anand, was a super big fan of race cars, so we decided that we wanted to enter in the Shell-Eco Marathon. This competition was where teams would design and simulate a car design from the ground up (which included the car frame, electronics system, etc.) and race each other all the way in Indianapolis. This idea felt incredibly challenging but at the same time incredibly fun and rewarding, so we decided to commit to this.
However, building a car is expensive (duh). A competition like this mostly consists of colleges like MIT, and they fund these projects through sponsorships that go up to $100k. We don't have that luxury. We don't have the reputation, publicity, or connections to get the sponsors and money that we need. After all, we are the first of our kind to compete in this competition: a high school.
It's why we've started this GoFundMe. Our current design plan is around $1500 dollars which is around the minimum viability a car in this competition could be. We have some money pitched in from the members of the club, but it is only barely enough to make the cost for the design. This doesn't even factor the costs of traveling to Indianapolis, finding lodging for the 4 days of the competition, and the countless upgrades that we would love for the car but simply had to drop due to budget. Every dollar would mean so much for us, whether that be towards the car or the travel itself.
Anything helps a club like us. Sharing our cause to your local businesses, friends, or on social media for example. With your help, our dreams of competing in Indianapolis may be reached.
Thank you so much in advance!
For anyone who's interested, here are the links to some spreadsheets. These will update as the project goes on, so feel free to periodically check to see the progress!
Material Breakdown List: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Yfej4jy6qCln7X3FJR5AUlxAS_l0H590Sd6L4x5Hpzs/edit?gid=610887347#gid=610887347
Official Cost Report:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17jn1VoapRX4_1KVIlKl3MY3EFVWHAzy6hK3gV7KdToU/edit?gid=0#gid=0
General Management:
Organizer
Joshua Dai
Organizer
Pleasanton, CA