• Monday-What'sUP February 21 - 11:37 pm

Over the weekend, the Michigan Tech Mini Baja races were held in Lake Linden, with teams from colleges all over the country competing in races and jumps, testing their specially designed off road vehicles in winter's worst driving conditions. After having just come out of a recent thaw and then experiencing freezing temperatures and high winds, the track was still in good shape with a number of built-up jumps, some that sent the vehicles flying through the air. It was quite exciting, watching these little "buggies" and hearing the whine of their engines, as they raced around the motocross style track, shaped with ice and snow.

If you don't know much about Baja Racing, here's a short explanation from the MTU Baja webpage:
"The Blizzard Baja Enterprise is a team hosted by Michigan Technological University to compete in the Society of Automotive Engineers’ collegiate Baja competition. Every year, SAE hosts national events across the country to give teams the opportunity to see how their vehicles compare with other universities from all over the country and from other countries as well. The primary objective of Blizzard Baja is to design, build, test, and race a reliable off-road vehicle that serves as a safer alternative to ATV’s and dirt bikes. The price of the vehicle must also be comparable to other vehicles on the market with the same capabilities. All teams competing in the SAE competition are required to use a stock 10 hp Briggs & Stratton engine; this requires team designs to optimize drive-train efficiency and suspension geometry."

I wasn't able to find anything out there on the web, listing the results of Saturday's races, so if anyone knows where the results can be found, please post a link here below.

Received a phone call this morning from "Tony," with a resource for the link on Michigan Tech's News feed, Tech Today. Check it out for an article by John Gagnon about the event. (Scroll down to article #5). Thanks Tony!

Awesome!

From the Tech News Today site:
There were three events at the Winter Baja. Two two-hour endurance runs were scored by the number of laps. Here are the results of the endurance races:

Team and Laps
1--Central Michigan,69
2--UW-Milwaukee, 67
3--Michigan State, 63
4--Sanilac Career Center, 62.7
5--South Dakota School of Mining and Tech, 61.7
6--Northern Illinois, 61
7--UW-Stout, 59.7
8—Ferris State, 59
9—University of Iowa, 58.8
10—Northern Michigan, 57
11--Ohio Northern, 56
12—Michigan Tech, 54
13--Northwestern Michigan College, 48
14--Kettering, 6
15--Western Michigan, 1

Twelve teams then participated in a short race where they negotiated part of the track backwards. Central Michigan won that race, too.

Mary says: Thanks Babyseal!

Lake Linden was jumping on Saturday, this was going on right outside my window.. I picked a great town to come back home to live in !

FIRE UP CHIPS!