Brandon High Electric Car Club Pulls Off A Shocker

Teacher Vic Nieves surveyed the scene in his classroom at Brandon High, where a dozen students - revved up and raring to race - swarmed around a 9-foot-long electric dragster suspended on a lift.

"This work area looks like somebody took a toolbox and a trash can and dumped 'em out," he said. "These guys just work on this thing like a bunch of beavers."

Nieves, who teaches automotive technology at Brandon High, organized the school's first electric car club in September. About two dozen students signed up for the gig and got in gear to custom-build an electric car in time for a race Feb. 14 at the University of South Florida in Tampa.

The group decided on a three-wheeled, wedge-shaped chassis that Nieves said was as clear-cut and effective as their race-day strategy.

A day before the race, he said, "If we don't crash or have the wheels fall off, it'll be a good day. Our goals are to have fun, don't wreck the car and don't finish last."

The Brandon High crew went the distance and placed first at USF in a contest with a dozen other teams.

Not without speed bumps, though. Junior Eric Daub had to upright the car after a spill in the second leg.

Daub laughed as he recalled the pit crew running toward him to help him get out of the lightweight, overturned vehicle.

Before the crew could reach him, he said, "I just put my hand outside the car and pushed myself off the ground to right it. As soon as the wheels hit the ground, I took off."

In the end, he helped the team earn first place.

After the race, Nieves said, "They built this thing and got it running and proved our design was effective." He attributed the win to workmanship, driving skills and team effort.

Teams competed for the best average finish time in two hour-long runs. Racers navigated a tight, quarter-mile run with sharp turns on the makeshift course in the parking lot at USF's College of Engineering.

Nieves said top speeds of such vehicles don't vary much - they generally run about 20 to 25 mph, depending on the course layout - so driver skill is important. The object is to lead the pack in laps while maintaining battery power.

"You can do anything to the car during the race except change the batteries, and you have to be running at the end of the hour," Nieves said. "You've got to know when to let off the 'gas' and not power through all the turns."

Brandon High senior Justin Sanders strapped in for the first race.

"Sanders, he's a senior, and he's had his license a while," Nieves said. "I'm not sure he does any official racing, but he's been known to hit the gas a few times. With his driving ability in the first race, we figured we were good to go."

The race, although slow-paced, was not without its white-knuckle moments.

Daub took the wheel for the second run.

"Daub only has a learner's permit, and the first few laps were a little shaky, but then he got the hang of it ... until the battery started to run down," Nieves said.

About 15 minutes before the end of Daub's run, the voltage reading dropped, and the car stalled to a crawl.

"I was like, ah, man, I don't know if I'm going to be able to finish this," Daub said. A walkie-talkie microphone taped to his seatbelt had come loose and fallen off, so Daub had to use hand signals to relay voltage readings to his pit crew on the sidelines.

"I almost told them to just stop and wait a bit," Nieves said. "But Daub was able to keep the car going. With a wide-open throttle, it was going just a little faster than walking speed, but we won. We won the whole thing."

Other local schools represented were USF, Middleton and King high schools and Tampa Bay Technical High School, where Nieves taught for nine years. High schools from the Florida Panhandle and upstate New York also competed, along with individual hobbyists from Fort Myers and Cape Canaveral.

In Nieves' classroom last week, students already were brainstorming about modifications to the car for the next race in April. The club will compete on a half-mile oval stock-car track.

"That kind of course takes different gearing and steering than the race at USF," Nieves said. "Once you get up to speed, you will not need to slow down."

Sanders and Daub are eager to drive in another race. Daub said he gained valuable driving experience in the club's first race.

He also had a lot of fun.

"I took a corner fairly fast, and the car started to drift and caught a storm drain," he said, laughing when he recalled the pit crew's quick response. "That's when it flipped."