Half a mile north of Main Campus lies the Georgia Tech Student Competition Center (SCC), home to seven different racing teams run entirely by Tech students who design, build and drive cars competing in competitions all over the country. GT Motorsport, one of the teams in the SCC, returned from competition last month, having achieved an impressive feat, placing third overall from a field of 107 teams competing in the international Formula SAE Michigan competition.
The Technique spoke with Alexander Merryman, fourth-year BA & NEUR and GT Motorsports team lead, about the work that went into attending the competition, how he views the organization that he leads and his goals for the team going forward.
Preparing for a competition like the Formula SAE Michigan took years of work and dedication from GT Motorsport’s members and their leadership team. Merryman explained that GT Motorsports operates on a two-year design cycle, meaning the work on their 2025 car, which they just returned from competition with, started in Fall 2023.
This two-year design cycle can give the team a competitive advantage over teams that operate on a one-year cycle by allowing more time for performance tests and subsequent adjustments before heading to competition. The extra time also helps handle problems with the car, which are inevitable.
Their 2025 car was finished in December, but shortly after, while the car was in storage overnight, the water used in the engine for cooling froze, expanded and cracked the car’s engine block, setting the team back several weeks.
After the repairs, GT Motorsports was able to test and configure their car until the competition in May, recording about 250 miles on the car, using the dormant Six Flags parking lot as a testing site before race day. Compared to a road car, 250 miles may not seem like a lot, but for a student-built race car, every mile is rich with valuable information that helps fine-tune the car. This amount of testing allows the team to deliver on one of their goals to have a boring competition.
“We want a boring competition, which means nothing’s going wrong,” Merryman said.“We did all the work up front that we needed to do, and we did things the right way so we could go to Michigan to compete. We have exciting moments, like when we do very well, but there’s no crazy surprise like needing to replace an engine or something.”
During the life cycle of the car, the GT Motorsports team splits up into subsystems, each with its own area of focus for the vehicle. For example, the aerodynamic team will focus on how air flows around the car to decrease drag and increase downforce, while the chassis team will focus on the underlying framework of the car.
Naturally, each subsystem team will have its own priorities for what it would like to test in the car with limited resources, so team leaders must work together to decide what is the most valuable use of testing time to achieve the ultimate result they want. According to Merryman, this is one of the ways that their work can provide experience to those who plan to enter a similar auto manufacturing industry.
“[For] the structure of the dynamics work, the design process is similar to what you might experience somewhere else,” Merryman said. “I’m always very happy that our leads and numbers are so fantastic that they get internships.”
Performing well at the competition this year was crucial for the team’s long-term goals, especially following a disappointing showing last year, when the team placed 60th. Merryman said that the team has historically performed fairly cyclically, earning a good result about every four years, while in other years, performance has slid. However, Merryman sees a different vision for the team.
He hopes to break this cycle and keep GT Motorsports consistently performing at the top with some of the best schools in the country. This result was the first step towards that, bouncing back from a disappointing showing the previous year and beating their top-seven performance from two years ago.
“We want to be one of the teams that is always in the top 10,” Merryman said. “If we could always win each year that would be awesome, but realistically, we always want to be in the top 10. There’s not really a reason why we shouldn’t be if we do a good job of building on our momentum.”
Competing is not just about going the fastest; at competition, judges score the car over eight categories, including cost, design, endurance and efficiency, but more important than just getting to the competitions is staying in business. It can become very costly to manufacture, test and transport the car to competition, so GT Motorsports relies heavily on sponsors, including General Motors and Ford, who help the team afford these expenses and provide students with these skill-building experiences.
Going forward, Merryman hopes the team will continue to build better cars, perform well at their annual competition and avoid complacency from a great result. He believes that to continue building and learning, it starts with getting the right people doing what they love.
“I think one thing I always remind myself is that it is people that build a car, and that we really do have amazing people on this team that put in a lot of work, and I’m hoping they’re seeing all their hard work pay off,” Merryman said. “I’m a strong believer in putting the right people in place first, making sure the people are happy with what they’re doing, they’re doing what they want to do, and they’re operating in the right way, and then the rest follows you.”
If you would like to learn more or get involved with GT Motorsport, you can find their website here, www.gtms.gatech.edu and their Instagram here, @georgiatech.motorsports.