Lincoln Academy students want to keep perfect record at Road America

BELOIT — Three cars built by 15 Lincoln Academy students will be on the Road America track today in Elkhart Lake competing in the ChallengeUSA Energy Efficient Motorsports series, the final event of their first year in the competition.

The goal of ChallengeUSA is to give students hands-on experience in designing, developing, building and driving their own cars in competition. The winner of the electrathon competition is the car that travels the farthest distance in an hour on an electric battery. ChallengeUSA also has a supermileage division where the winner is the car that achieves the highest miles-per-gallon on a combustion engine.

Even though it’s the first year for The Lincoln Academy to be a part of ChallengeUSA, the students aren’t performing like novices. One of their three cars has won all three races that they have entered and they set a track record for distance at the Autobahn Country Club track in Joliet, Illinois, in its last race. A second one has taken two firsts and a second in a different division. The third car has claimed two seconds and a third.

Of course, the students have a good mentor. Matt Schultz, a career and technical education teacher at The Lincoln Academy, coached ChallengeUSA teams from Lakeview Tech Academy for several years before coming to Beloit when the charter school opened.

“We had so much to do just getting things set up properly that I didn’t want to try this right away,” Schultz said. “Last year, we did some fundraising to get it going and the kids have been into it from the beginning.”

The car design-build program was a class offering in the first semester. There were 15 kids in the class. Thirteen have continued on as a club in the second semester.

“I’m not surprised (at the student interest),” Schultz said. “I’ve done this for a lot of years. This is why I teach. I get to work with with kids who just live this. They come in on spring break, lunch, after school.”

He is a bit surprised at how quickly they’ve grown. At Lakeview Tech, he was working almost entirely with kids who wanted to be engineers. There’s definitely a mix of skills and interests with his Lincoln Academy students.

“In the end, they all kind of found their niches organically,” he said. “We talked about brakes and a kid from each team took that over. Another from each focused on alignment. The best welders burned everything together. Not everyone wants to drive. Some just want to work in the pits. It’s fun to see how that comes together.”

The cars typically top out at speeds between 40 to 45 mph.

Schultz said the goal is to grow the program to six cars — two by sophomores, two by juniors, two by seniors. He used his classroom budget and the amount raised last year to get the program rolling. Down the road, he hopes to find corporate or company partners who want to be a part of it. By rule, the schools cannot spend more than $3,500 per car.

This year, 20 Wisconsin high schools and one middle school created ChallengeUSA cars. There are heats Monday and Tuesday. You can learn more about the program and follow the results at https://sites.google.com/view/challengeusa/home.