Racecars are notoriously secretive machines for a reason: Victory often hinges less on the engine or driver than on the design itself.
Each season, many teams in the Formula Society of Automotive Engineers (FSAE) build upon and modify their preexisting designs to produce a competitive, race-worthy car. Top teams within the FSAE competition have been doing so for over 30 years.
Formula SAE is a part of SAE International, which hosts annual collegiate competitions. Student engineers work in teams to design and build a formula-style car in preparation for a race against other FSAE teams.
Despite being a leading institution for mechanical engineering, Harvey Mudd College’s road to competing in the FSAE has just begun with Harvey Mudd Racing.
“Most top engineering colleges have a Formula SAE team, and our college didn’t have one, so starting one at these colleges is a huge deal,” mechanical subteam lead Max Conine HM ’28 said.
President Audrey Gruian HM ’26 founded the club in 2025 after talking with her high school friends, most of whom had gone to college and joined their respective racing teams.
She eventually brought the idea of starting one of her own to her friends on campus.
“[As] I started listing all the reasons why it wouldn’t work — we are a small school, we don’t have space, our students are so busy, we are never going to make this happen … the more I tried to tell [my friend] why it wouldn’t work, the more I realised how much I wanted to make it happen,” Gruian said.
Gruian was not the first to attempt this project, but she is the only one who has been able to bring the idea to fruition. So, Harvey Mudd Racing was born.
Right now, the team is actively constructing the car in The Makerspace. The alluring skeleton of the car, tucked away in a corner of Mudd’s creative facility, has routinely drawn more people into the project and onto the team.
After familiarizing themselves with the limitations and dimensional requirements for a formula-style car, the team began construction entirely from scratch. Currently, they are welding the chassis, the foundational frame connecting the engine and suspension; eventually, there will be a recycled motorcycle engine placed inside. The chassis recently departed CAD software and became three-dimensional, a significant milestone for the team.
Starting a racing team and building an FSAE car is a tall order, but doing so at a small school with limited funds made this project even more challenging.
Ultimately, Gruian and the team learned to use the comparatively small 5C community to their advantage. Gruian secured faculty support for the club and built an agreement with The Makerspace at Mudd, giving them a place to store all their materials.
“The biggest obstacles that we foresaw going into this were space constraints, second was money — it’s very expensive,” Gruian said.
Building the race car required the club to begin work beyond the workshop, negotiating funding with the Mudd administration. In many ways, the club has pushed both engineering boundaries and institutional ones.
Given that this club’s operating costs are much greater than other clubs’ budgets, the money they received through internal grants and the Associated Students of Harvey Mudd College proved insufficient.
Thus, they had to make the case to Mudd for permission to pursue external scholarships.
After many meetings and negotiations, they are now able to receive external sponsorship for their club, which is something that — to their knowledge — no other Mudd club has been able to do.
“There’s really no precedent for how Harvey Mudd clubs go about [working with outside sponsors],” business lead Lexi Neff SC ’28 said. “So it’s kind of exciting because we get to be the first club to reach out to people and be like, ‘Hey, we’re doing something really cool, you should help us.’”
Another way Harvey Mudd Racing pushes the envelope is by extending club applications to all 5C students; they are one of the few Mudd clubs that welcome students from other colleges.
These radical departures from the standard structure of Mudd clubs reflect a larger shift in how ambitious student-led projects can operate at the 5Cs.
Behind the scenes, the non-technical side also works hard to keep the team operating. Managing sponsorships, marketing and club-related business all fall under their jurisdiction, which allows the technical team to focus on building the car.
Neff, along with many others, represents the business side of the team. They help the club access external sponsorship and build relationships beyond the colleges.
“It’s really just awesome to create connections with all of the racing community out there, including a ton of Harvey Mudd alumni who got involved after college in mechanical leadership or just the racing world,” Neff said. “Being able to bring those people together over a car is really awesome.”
Once a week, both the technical and non-technical sides of the team meet to provide updates, ensuring all parts of the project are accessible and keeping everyone involved. This allows members to stay up to date on the status of both the car and the business operations, contributing to the club’s collaborative nature.
As the car comes together, the club simultaneously builds towards its goal to compete in the 2027 FSAE race, one part at a time. Harvey Mudd Racing is steadfastly working to see those coveted checkered flags, and soon, they’ll be one step closer to answering Neff’s question:
“How many times do you get to build a race car?”
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