About the Team
Baja SAE is an international college-level competition in which students design and build a single-seat off-road race car from scratch. Each year, the Union College Baja Team competes in multiple events:
- Dynamic Braking: Required to participate in any other events
- Straight-line Acceleration: Determines the car’s grid position in Endurance
- Endurance: A four-hour race based on lap count
- Suspension and Traction: An intense obstacle course intended to push the limits of each car’s suspension and power, measured in distance traveled
- Maneuverability: A short obstacle course with time penalties for exiting the course or hitting obstacles
- Hill Climb: Tests each car’s torque and driver technique
- Sled Pull: Tests the pull strength of each car
- Business Presentation: Presenting the car’s final design to a panel of judges along with the data and reasoning behind each engineering decision
2024 Season
In the spring, our team competed with 107 other schools at the competition held in Williamsport, PA, placing 25th in the Hill Climb and 40th in the endurance race. In September, we went to a mini-Baja competition called OktoBajafest hosted by Clarkson University. During the endurance race, we achieved 6th place and set a new record of 49 laps completed in four hours. At OktoBaja, 17 colleges competed with three cars allowed per team. Overall, we placed 9th.
