Over the past 24 years, GTMS has competed in over 20 events in North America and 4 events abroad. The team has placed has high as 2nd in the North American event in 1990 out of a field of 23 cars; more recent top finishes include 3rd and 4th place finishes in 2002 and 2003 respectively, and an 8th place finish in 2009, out of fields of over 100 cars in each of those years. The team has won three of the overseas events: twice in the United Kingdom (Formula Student) and once in Australia (Formula Australasia).

The Formula SAE competition comprises a blend of static and dynamic events, intended to challenge both the student's knowledge of their car's design, and to challenge the performance and ruggedness of the car itself. The static events include a business presentation, a design review, and a cost-to-manufacture evaluation. The dynamic events include a skid pad test of the lateral acceleration capability of the car, a sprint test of the straight-line acceleration of the car, an autocross event to test the dynamic capabilities of the car in terms of handling, and the all-important endurance event that tests the reliability and overall performance of the car, as well as its fuel economy.

Many of the components on the car are custom-designed and fabricated by the students themselves, examples of which from this year's car include the brake calipers, front and rear machined uprights, eccentric-mounted differential carrier, and chain-gear steering systems. Throughout the year preceeding the event, the team members designed, analyzed, fabricated, tested and assembled the various subsystems that go into the car, and in a final rush before the event, put it all together to yield a finished high-performance race car.

The team scored in all events at this year's competition. But, late completion of the car meant that it wasn't as tuned or as reliable as it could have been. The car suffered some "infant mortality" failures during thecompetition (including failure of an industrial off-the-shelf solenoid that crippled the shifting system during the acceleration event). Under extreme time pressures, they identified the problems, developed effective solutions, implemented them, and moved on to the next task. Most significantly, the team comnpleted and scored in the all important endurance event, placing 17th. Historically, less than half of the endurance entrants actually complete the event; the majority are unable due to component failures, leaks, etc. (after all, these are student-designed and -built cars, after all; they don't call it the "Endurance" event for nothing).

At the end of it all, the top five schools were:
1 Oregon State
2 University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
3 Technical University of Graz, Austria
4 University of Maryland, College Park
5 Rochester Institute of Technology

In addition to the host of teams from United States schools, teams from Canada, Japan, Korea, Singapore, India, Venezuela, Brazil, Germany, Austria, Turkey, Estonia, and the United Kingdom participated in this year's event.

GT students at this year's event were:Ben Coburn, Ryan Faulkner, John Harris, Ian Harrison, Tom Kwasniak (Team Leader), Michelle Lynch, James Masdea, Joe McHenry, Damon Pipenberg (Chief Engineer), Luis Romero, Jonathan Skoczylas, Drew Tribble, Warren Van Nus, Mark Wagner, and Adam Young. Many other team members contributed throughout the year.

I am extremely proud of this year's team, and very encouraged for the coming year. Indeed, the team has already selected the team leader for next year, Luis Romero, and our Chief Engineer, Adam Young. The team is already setting goals and priorities for the car and for GTMS, and understand that next year's race is already underway.

The team and I would like to thank all of our sponsors and supporters. Without them we would not have even had the chance of competing.