Gaucho Racing

My undergrad passion project, all because I couldn’t bring my M3 to UCSB, and I had a void in my heart I had to fill.

I joined the team when there were about 10 guys working in a dorm hall study room. UCSB was the only UC school without a Formula Student automotive engineering team, as all of the teams in the past had fallen apart only a year after starting, and we would soon learn why. The team spent the entirety of 2021-2022 researching how to build one of these cars, while it was my job to secure funding for a university racing team that had no car yet.

Needless to say, it was tough to convince people to give us money, but we managed to scrape together about $30k leading into the 2022-2023 competition year. As nearly all of the UC teams had at least 6-figure budgets to build their cars, you could say that we were at a disadvantage. Didn’t stop us though.

Cutting a Chassis by Hand

It was standard for many teams to design their chassis in CAD and then outsource the cutting and notching of tubes, so they could get pre-prepped tubes that were perfectly cut to size and evenly notched, allowing them to just weld together and have everything fit perfectly. We didn’t have the funds for that.

So, instead of studying for ochem, I spent my time in the UCSB machine shop cutting steel tubes with the chop saw and notching them on the belt sander. While it certainly wasn’t perfect, considering the time, funding, and experience constraints we had on the team, it made it to comp, and set the foundation for Gaucho Racing to exist today.

01 / 05

Three Weeks, One Trailer, and a Cold Email

Nearly all teams had been established for 3+ years and had on-campus storage for their car and supplies, along with dedicated machining space. UCSB did not want us anywhere near their campus facilities during our foundational year, which is why no other team survived to modern day. We had to be scrappy.

In addition to only being able to use the machine shop from 11am to 3pm (when we should have all been studying for our courses), we also had to find a place to store our car as it was coming together, and transport it to Michigan with 3 weeks left until comp, all while studying for finals, as comp was scheduled for schools on the semester system and the UCs were on the quarter system.

With ~$1000 left in the war chest after flights and lodging in Michigan, options were limited. We found a flatbed trailer on Facebook Marketplace for $500 and decided our only option was to enclose it ourselves somehow, or see our dreams of attending our first comp sink.

I then looked into the school’s partners for materials and saw that the biggest aluminum manufacturer in the Santa Barbara area, Neal Feay, the company that makes the large aluminum facades for Louis Vuitton and belt buckles for Hermès, was not part of the list, which led me to dig further. I spoke to the folks at the machine shop, and they said there was some drama in the past between the owner and the campus, which is why they cut ties years ago. That was all I could find out.

I then reached out to the company itself, inquiring about the possibility of a deal on sheet aluminum and structural tubing for the team. The owner’s son got back to me and arranged a meeting, picking me up from campus in his GT4 Porsche, where I gave him directions to the machine shop, where we would talk more. You could imagine I was beyond ecstatic. After talking more, he thanked me for the opportunity to reopen relationships with the university, and said that he would gift us any aluminum we needed.

From there, it was a race to enclose this trailer, get it certified by the DMV for road use, and get it to Michigan, all while studying for finals. After building friendly relations with a local company that builds luxury campers in Goleta, we were given free access to their facilities, a place to store the trailer during construction, and guidance on making a road-legal enclosed trailer.

01 / 04

Succession

After this year, my role largely focused on design validation and teaching younger team members the ropes to ensure the team’s succession and survival. Take a look at the website and LinkedIn to see how they’re doing as they test GR26 ahead of racing in Michigan this year.