In a Brooklyn garage at the Tandon School of Engineering sits the unfinished frame of a motor vehicle embossed with prints of the NYU torch and the number 66. A desk occupies the center of the garage studio, and a whiteboard covered in technical diagrams stands over it.
The diagrams refer to how the seat of a Baja vehicle — a small off-road car designed for the Society of Automotive Engineers engineering competition — will be installed. NYU Motorsports plans to race with the automobile in an intercollegiate race hosted by the SAE International at the end of the academic year.
Though the team approaches every year with high hopes, it’s approaching the 2025-26 season as a rebuild year. Founded in 2015, the team has seen its fair share of ups and downs during its decadelong history.
“The team started out pretty poorly,” Arjun Krishnan, a Stern sophomore and director of operations, said. “It was a grassroots team. We had no funding. We went to competition three years after we founded it, but then we crashed within the first few laps.”
When Krishnan joined the team as a first-year, he found a dysfunctional club with too little leadership and too much drama. Under his leadership, the club has increased funding and outreach, including hosting a watch party for the Formula 1 Brazilian Grand Prix. The club now has a budget of approximately $28,000, sponsorships from Red Bull and Polaris and over 100 members.
“It is a huge, huge transformation for a team that seemed dead in the water,” Krishnan said. “You can just tell it’s a different atmosphere, everyone wants to get involved.”
Krishnan said that work at NYU Motorsports is deeply meaningful because of the tangible effects it can have on race outcomes.
“At a Stern club, a pitch competition or anything, it’s hypothetical,” Krishnan said “You’re doing it just for practice. But within NYU Motorsports, it’s not just practice. Your work directly contributes to how our entire team does in a race.”
The team is currently building two vehicles from scratch, a Baja SAE vehicle and a Formula SAE vehicle, but for a few years, they couldn’t pass brake check — which is crucial given the danger of the sport.
“I saw a Baja car roll six times and almost fall into a lake,” said Vincenzo Gallegos, a Tandon senior and team principal. “The driver almost died. The way that you design the frame, and the specs that you put in are to ensure that things like that can’t happen.”
Gallegos said the team also saw a schism recently between those who wanted to race with different types of automobiles — a conflict resolved by the NYU administration forcing the two groups back together. According to Gallegos, significant work was required to get the team back on track, both on the engineering and operations side.
“There were lots of sleepless nights, 16-hour days,” Gallegos said.
A three-year member of the club, Gallegos said the NYU Motorsports’ rebuild hasn’t been about starting from rock bottom, but rather turning a corner with the pieces already in place.
“It’s catching momentum and keeping momentum,” Gallegos said. “That’s how it is in racing. If you take a corner too slow, it’s harder to speed back up and get that qualifying time that you want.”
Contact Noah Kim at [email protected].