Auburn students revved their creative engines Friday at Skybar in single-elimination races with motorized cars constructed from Red Bull cans.
Red Bull sponsored the "Red Bull Racing Cans" to provide an opportunity for engineering students to be creative. Drew Sherer, senior in mechanical engineering; Philip Crawford, sophomore in mechanical engineering; and graduate students Eric Dooley and Jordan Vrbas took first place.
The group won four passes to Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham with the chance of driving actual racecars.
"It was awesome winning," Sherer said. "We didn't think we were going to. It was an awesome surprise."
Each team was given a battery-powered motor, a frame and Red Bulls.
"We really just had to be creative," Sherer said. "We kind of went the aerodynamic route."
Sherer said his team spent at least five hours preparing its car.
Brett Mallinak, sophomore in chemical engineering, said he used three Red Bull cans, superglue and tape to complete his car.
"I did all right," Mallinak said, "but I didn't get far enough."
A few members of Auburn's Formula Society of Automotive Engineers team placed second in the competition.
Every year, Formula SAE builds an open-wheel racecar to compete against other schools.
"It's a really competitive series, and it's one of the biggest racing series in the world," said SAE marketing diector Andrew Rains. "Our students get experience in motorsports and engineering. It's a really interesting and fun project for us, and we love it."
This year the group placed 16th out of 120 competing schools.
Approximately 10\0xAD members of SAE competed either in groups or individually for the Red Bull event.
Rains said the team used the Red Bull project as a morale booster.
"Remote control cars are cool, and making racecars out of Red Bull cans was just something to help our team relax a little and remind us that we enjoy what we do," Rains said.
Much of the focus was on making the cars aerodynamic, Rains said, but on such a small scale he was uncertain of the effectiveness, leaving the true test to the driver's skill.
"We tried to cut out the logo," Sherer said, "because they have a pretty cool logo with the two bulls and the blue."
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