Mustangs Motorsports is a nonprofit organization at MSU that allows students from any major to join and work on building a Formula-1 race car that will be taken to competition. The organization was established in 2021 and was named Formula Society of Automotive Engineers (FSAE).

Mechanical engineering senior Nathaniel Joseph, spoke on the rebranding of the organization from the FSAE name to Mustangs Motorsports.

“The older guys, I have been talking to, we just didn’t like how the name was just sounding, it was just sounding Mustangs FSAE, it just sounded boring. We wanted to sound more cool. Mustangs Motorsports, we decided on that, and when we re-registered as Mustangs Motorsports,” Joseph said.

Mustangs Motorsports is student led and relies heavily on sponsorships, donations from external organizations and out-of-pocket expenses that the members usually have to pay themselves. A way the organization gets donations and sponsorships is by reaching out to businesses and allowing them to put their business logo on the car to advertise.

“The first major donation that we got was from our Dean [Dr. Robert Brennan] over at McCoy, and Dr. Pokharel, who is our advisor, who was the ambassador who spoke on our behalf while the team was pushing for FSAE, and that’s how they got the funds… At the last unveiling of the car…I feel like just from the exposure we got… through that people were able to donate and sponsor,” Joseph said.

In spring 2024, Mustangs Motorsports unveiled the car they had been working on to anybody who wanted to come. Typically projects, like the car, take an average of about two years, before the organization was ready to unveil it to the public.

“Given how the whole club is student-led, and all the money that we receive is from sponsorships and donations, or sometimes out of our own pocket, sometimes that can be an issue too. The time doesn’t necessarily mean that it is a long time, it just means that we are working with what we have,” marketing junior Edron Norde said.

Now that the team has unveiled the car, they are looking forward to the Michigan International Speedway competition for the spring of 2025.

While Joseph has yet to attend one of these competitions, he said he has learned all about what they entail and how to better prepare the car to succeed through the series of tests.

“From my knowledge, what it is set up, like, is they basically grill you, and what I mean by that is they ask you a bunch of questions based on your financial decision, in no particular order, your engineering decisions that you make, executive decisions, ‘Why you did what you did with design’ and ‘Why did you buy this, why did you do this that way.’ It consists of a static and dynamic event, where they test the car,” Joseph said.

For the static event, they test the car when it is not moving. There is a bed where they put the car on and lean it to check the sense of gravity.

In the series of dynamic events, they test how the car corners, how it breaks and its acceleration. 

For these types of stages in the competition, the Mustangs Motorsports team is broken up into different categories, based on the area of expertise. For example, the business team would take on the business questions. While the team would prefer to stay in these groups, that is not always the case. Joseph says every one has to be prepared just in case.

The team is open to anybody who has an interest in what they are trying to accomplish. 

“Other people who are interested can join. The only limitation is the space that we have at the garage, but anybody who is interested can come,” Joseph said, adding, “It doesn’t matter what your major is, because you never know you might fall in love with what you find, so we are very open to different people, especially right now. We are looking for people from marketing, business, finance, engineering, electrical engineering, math, just to diversify.”

The goal of the team is to create an environment to prepare their members for careers after MSU, while also making a car that can win competitions.

“Essentially the goal we are trying to achieve at MSU, is to create an environment where you have a very large collaborative effect, among the different disciplines, because that’s how the real world is,” Joseph said, continuing, “I feel like a lot sometimes college students don’t get to experience that type of collaboration, they are just isolated.”

The team has meetings that are mainly for the team, but are open for everyone who is interested, and wants to learn about the organization and what they do.

“When you join a club, and on our discord, we say the garage is open, if you just want to head down there and learn something, or see something you can just pop on in,” Norde said. 

Mustangs Motorsports is hosting MSU’s first ever car show on Oct. 20 at 3 p.m. in the parking lot of Akin Auditorium. This event is open to those who have an interest in cars.