More Than a Machine
Gaucho Racing: The Real Story
It was supposed to be impossible.
People thought it was too dangerous, nobody had ever done this before.
That changed with our founder, Nick Rivelle, a former English major turned engineering student. He set out to do the impossible: revive the school's racing program.
"Aint nothin like building a racecar."
But he couldn't do it alone. Rivelle became our "pied piper" and stirred enough interest for people to follow his lead. The program couldn't have moved forward without the support of faculty and staff members, especially our advisor, Kirk Fields, P.E. With special thanks to R&D engineer Dr. Trevor Marks, as well as Andy Weinberg and Josh Bowie for helping the dream become a reality. So, with access to the school's machine shop and enough unbridled passion to run a small country, the team embarked on a year-long project to create our first fully student-engineered car.
We didn't just build a car, we created momentum.
Welcome to the Team
Walking into Cooper Lab, the place where the team's general meetings are held, you’ll experience something like this: a large room made cramped with the next generation of engineers, organized chaos that buzzes exactly like how you think an enclosed space of young adults does. For any student who craved a purpose and something to put hand to metal to, this was the place. The car wasn't just a project, it was the physical manifestation of years worth of blood, sweat, and tears. This is a team that wants to succeed and, more than anything, believes they can.
“It feels like the big leagues.”
Of course, not everything was smooth sailing. The majority of time is spent in trial and error, moving away from school work and theoretical academia into actual problem solving and borderline insane lines of thinking. In addition to teamwork, lots of teamwork.
For any project of this scale, all the moving parts must be aligned. This is especially true for our racing team. During a regular working session, there will be sub-groups focused on specialized areas, such as electronics, hardware, suspension, chassis, powertrain, and aero. So that when everyone comes together in a general meeting to discuss progress, the team is no less of a well-oiled machine than the vehicle we're building.
During our off time, the 20+ members of the team like to crash at Super Cuca’s. We frequent the joint so often that we get a 15% discount for every meal. But even better than the burritos and tacos with extra salsa is the nonstop debate about ways to improve the car. Work-and-life balance doesn't exist here.
"You know if we use steel a-arms, then we could use welded inserts."
"Sounds good, go for it. Can I have some help on the last problem of 156?"
"Yeah, sure. Can I have what's left of your burrito?"
"Be my guest, also didn't you need a ride to the train station on Friday?"
"Yup, could you take me around noon? Side note, for your spindles: you do know that you have to apply DFM for everything, right? You know who's gonna make your messed-up parts: ME!"
And if it's not at a cozy Mexican joint, then it's at an apartment in the heart of Isla Vista where it all started. Unofficially coined as the "Hype House", members of the team hang out, cook up food, watch F1 competitions on the T.V., and, of course, talk shop about the car. There is no work-life balance; instead the team lives by another principle: all or nothing.
Someone may have a brilliant idea for the steering column, then be immediately shot down.
“If we move it 15 cm, my stuff will explode.”
“What about 5 cm?”
The first time the car rolled, it was an overcast, gloomy day. Night after night, members worked at starting it up, hoping each time would be the one. Team member Diego Vasquez had overslept from working late on the car the night before. He woke up to 10 missed calls from his teammates, telling him to hurry over and see the car, GR-24.
After spending late nights repeatedly machining, welding, and building, the light at the end of the tunnel finally emerged. It didn't matter if he was in the middle of class or even preparing for finals. The lecture could wait, the car's first functioning moment couldn't.
Diego recalls that as the best day in his life. On the ride back, he talked with another one of his teammates, former Fabrication Lead, Lynyrd Skynyrd over the radio. Even if he can't remember the exact words said back on that day, he could never forget the feeling of watching the car move with its own power. That was also the day it stopped being just a challenge to build the car, but now meant they could compete with engineers from around the world.
For the rest of the world, it was just another grey, cloudy day, but for our small group of student-engineers, that was when the real journey started. No matter what, they were making history.
"This is legacy."
Rewind! What is Formula SAE?
The Beginnings
1980s
Formula SAE is a student design competition that originally started at the University of Austin, Texas in 1980 by the SAE or Society of Automotive Engineers student branch.
Early Formation
1981
The students of SAE branch drafted a set of safety and competition rules for the very first Formula SAE competition during the summer of 1981 under the guidance of Prof. Ron Matthews and Bob Sechler.
How it Works
2000s
After two decades, the competition has more than established itself and set a benchmark for greatness. The competition is divided into two assessments: the Static Events and Dynamic Events. The former tests for technical elements while the latter evaluates the performance during an obstacle course. The vehicle must pass on both fronts to triumph.
The Current Stakes
2020s
The competition has grown exponentially since its infancy. Schools from across the nation participate in the annual event, now held in Michigan. Thousands of college-aged students have the opportunity to interact with large automobile companies, be judged by the racing industry's best minds, and witness other team's creative engineering feats or dark tech.
Team's First Meeting
2022
Nick Rivelle, Cesar Castillo, Steven Wong, Torin Schlunk, and Angelina Verdugo started UCSB Gaucho Racing.
Back to Us!
2024
Our team was the new kid on the block; no one expected us to make a competition-ready car, or even have the means to make the cross-country trek. Fortunately for us, impossible tasks are our specialty, so of course, that's exactly what we did.
Then, we touched down in Michigan...
The team made it to the 2025 Michigan Formula SAE competition. We were finally able to bring our very own student-designed car and represent all we've worked on at a national and international level. Our first challenge, pass the mechanical technical inspection.
Over the announcement speakers: "CAR 279 UC Santa Barbara, come down to paddock 9 for mechanical tech inspection!"
Scrambling to put all the bolts and spacers back on the car, we made it down to the paddock.
Checkmark after checkmark, we were passing until we heard on the radio.
"We passe...One sec, judge is looking at our steering column....Anyone got an angle grinder?"
We were so close, but at the technical inspection, the steering system stopped us from passing.
That's when we learned as a team that good teams build a car, great teams build the same car. Meaning everyone is working towards the same goal.
The seniors were devastated, and everyone was at their lowest. We all still huddled together in their paddock at the international speedway. The question remained: who wanted to keep working on the car? Many were tired. It felt like an impossible task to keep going. Yet, even as the seniors put down their gauntlets for the last time, the new future leads picked them up and pushed onward.
"I don't care if we don't pass tech, I'm not giving up."
It was a simmering, humid day under the hot Michigan sun. The heat on the pressure cooker was at an all-time high. But nothing was going to stop us, even failure itself.
It was more than history now; it was identity.
Keep moving forward, Wilbur Robinson
Dream
Design
Manufacture
Engineers
Gaucho Racing could only overcome setbacks thanks to the tenacity of our members. Yes, the competition is important and thrilling, but what everyone really wants is a space to create and share that creation with others.
That was our true calling, so when a bunch of K-12 kids visited UCSB in the spring, we met this call with preparation. The night before, we bought some wooden sticks, glue, rubber bands, and printed little gimmicky wheels. Then it was just a matter of getting their attention...
“Who wants to see a formula race car!”
A line of 200 to 300 kids lined up to take pictures with the car. To most, it was just something cool they wanted to touch and talk about with their friends, which was totally fine.
However, if we could even inspire a single student to think to themselves: "I could be an engineer when I grow up." It would have all been worth it.
As many members of the team have learned, the club will find you first, as long as you have the passion for it. Eventually, the day closed out and our team was set to make a presentation on our program. Out of the hundreds of kids from before, only about 10 high-schoolers showed up. It was perfect.
During the event, the kids got to make their own kiddie cars and race them. One of them, a young girl named Isabella, couldn't speak much English and thus had to rely on a member of the team to translate. She struggled to communicate her ideas, which made her think they weren't worth sharing, but the team was quick to correct her.
¿Qué tal si usamos una estructura de celosía para el chasis?
(What if we use a truss structure for the chassis?)
There was no such thing as a pointless idea, as a matter of fact, her design ended up on the final design and placed well in the competition! A team was nothing without the voices of its members, same language or not.
Team member Curtis could only explain the process as accepting how little you know, “You literally start with a blank CAD screen and you have to build a car. And you’re like… what am I doing?”
Doubt and uncertainty are inevitable, but that’s the point, there is no rule-book on how to make your own vehicle from scratch, nor how to build one good enough to win at the national level. You just need to start and make the discovery yourself.
We didn’t need hundreds of members; we just needed the right ones. The ones who will go on to work at the companies and institutions of their dreams.
Because that is what Gaucho Racing has always been about. It was never just about building a car. It was about building belief. Belief that a former English major could revive a racing program. Belief that a group of students with little more than passion and a machine shop could create something powerful enough to move under its own power. Belief that failure at a racetrack in Michigan was not the end of the story, but the beginning of the next chapter.
Every late night in the shop, every argument over a steering column, every burrito-fueled brainstorm at Super Cuca’s added another piece to something bigger than a vehicle. It created a community of people willing to try the impossible and figure it out together. And maybe, somewhere in that crowd of kids who lined up to see the car, someone like Isabella will remember that moment and decide to start building something of her own.
Because the real legacy of Gaucho Racing isn’t just the car that rolls across the track.
It’s the people who decide to build it next.
Aran Sandhu
Aran Sandhu
Thank you, Nick, and all those who keep the dream alive.
