2025 Formula Sun Grand Prix

Scrutineering Day 1: June 30th, 2025

On the first day of scrutineering, our team got greens in Driver Registration, Driver Operations, Body & Sizing, and Safety. We also got yellows in Mechanical, Electrical, and Battery Protection System, which means we weren't cleared for the track yet but were allowed to go to dynamics for those categories.

Scrutineering Day 2: July 1st, 2025

During the second day of scrutineering, our team got a yellow in Lights & Vision early in the morning, allowing us to go to Dynamics. During Scutineering, Dynamics is always the bottleneck station so it is important to get to it as early as possible. Unfortunately, while we were making some small fixes outside for Dynamics it began pouring rain. We protected Calypso as best we could, but faced some problems caused by the water that we had to fix. When we drive our car, we have full waterproofing that protects the internal electrical components from the rain. However, because of the work we were doing, we had the covers off and the top shell of the car lifted. After a full day of hard work, we were ready to attempt Dynamics in the late afternoon.

First, Calypso passed the U-Turn test, where our car must make a full U-Turn in under 16m. Calypso has a pretty tight turning radius, so we passed this test on the first try. Next, we had to drive in a full Figure-8 in less than 8 seconds per side. Calypso is a stable and maneuverable car, so we were also able to pass this test quickly. After this, our team moved on to the wet brake test. In this test, the driver gets about 3 seconds to come to a full stop after driving 30 MPH. On the second pass of the wet brake test, our brake pedal broke. This was a significant failure that our team was not prepared for. This could have easily been a race ending failure, but our mechanical pit crew determined a fix and stayed up late to get it done. We would like to give a huge thanks to Montana State and App State's solar car teams for allowing us to use their mill and bits to machine a new brake pedal that night.

Scrutineering Day 3: July 2nd, 2025

Our team had many stations to go on the last day of Scrutineering, and after the brake pedal failure we were all nervous starting the day with Dynamics. Fortunately, the new brake pedal worked great and our team was able to pass the wet brake test. We moved onto the slalom test next, which our drivers also passed with flying colors. This meant we got green in dynamics!

The final step was to get all of our yellows up to greens. This mean showing the scrutineers all the fixes we completed and demonstrating how Calypso meets the regulations now. We got all the stations but two cleared on July 2nd and were able to get the last two completed early on July 3rd, meaning that Calypso was cleared to start in grid position 10 on the starting line!

Race Day 1: July 3rd, 2025

Our team got cleared for the track just before the race began, so we were hustling to be ready for the starting line. We were able to get everything ready just in time and Calypso started driving great. We had some small issues that we had to stop in hot pit for a couple times, but overall it was a good day of driving. We ended the day with 67 laps, or 211 miles. Stanford was right ahead of us with 71 laps and Berkeley was right by us with 65 laps. We learned later on that Stanford had a 4 lap penalty and we were tied with them for first place. This day was nice and sunny and we also got great evening charging, so overall it was a great start to the race.

Race Day 2: July 4th, 2025

During the second day of the race, we had an electrical problem that resulted in us having to leave the hot pit to make some repairs. However, our electrical pit crew was very organized this race and we were able to successfully complete the repairs right next to the entrance to the track and get back to driving as quickly as possible. At the end of day 2, despite having to stop the car to fix it, we still managed to complete 73 laps (230 miles).

Race Day 3: July 5th, 2025

The last day of the race was intense. We were tied with Stanford, and we knew if we made even the smallest mistake that they would beat us. We had to be prepared for anything and have our car running with the most optimized strategy if we wanted to win. All of a sudden, Stanford started going super fast out of nowhere. This shocked us as we tried figuring out how they could possibly have so much battery left on the last day and we all hoped they were bluffing and could not maintain this speed. We chose to maintain our slightly slower speed in the hopes that they were trying to trick us into making a mistake. We got a few laps behind them, but eventually they slowed down and made a pit stop which gave us the opportunity to take the lead. It was neck and neck until the very end of the race, so we would like to thank Stanford on being such great competition and for pushing us to race at our best. This final day, our car only stopped one single time for a driver swap - otherwise all the systems worked perfectly for a full 8 hours of driving. This allowed us to complete 83 laps in one day, over 260 miles.

This great day of driving brought our total up to 223 laps, over 700 miles, driven in just 24 hours. This set a track record for SOV laps and led us to our first-ever victory in the single-occupant vehicle category. We’re incredibly proud of how Calypso performed.

Captains

Mechanical Pit Crew

Electrical Pit Crew

Strategy

Media & Logistics

We would like to give a huge thanks to the Student Sustainability Committee, the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, Jason Schripsema, Cadence, and all of our sponsors for making it possible for us to build and race our solar car. Without your valuable help, we would not have been able to attend the race this summer and our whole team is so grateful for your support.