»Cal Poly Racing

How did we get here?

Beginnings

I first found out about Cal Poly Racing as a junior in college but assumed it was too late for me to join. Despite that, I took the leap and joined in the fall of my senior year, starting out on the business team. For my first few months on the business team, I provided support to merchandising and partnerships, learning about how the team functioned.

One of the team’s biggest traditions is Build Week, where everyone comes together during the first week of winter break to assemble as much of the car as possible. It’s rare for business team members to attend, but I decided to go anyways to immerse myself more into the club. At the time, I barely knew anyone on the team, but a friend from one of my classes encouraged me to get involved with the more hands-on side of the team.

Thanks to that, I ended up getting "adopted" by various subsystems, lending a hand with composites work and learning as much as I could along the way.

Build Week

I started out on Baja’s ergonomics subsystem, throwing on a pair of coveralls and cutting carbon fiber for the seat of the Baja car. Before long, I was adopted by Formula’s Aerodynamics Team, helping with wet layups for the front wing of our formula-style racecar. By the end of the week, I had gotten to know a lot of people on the Formula team and had even been given a few side projects to work on.

Even though I was the only non-STEM major in Formula, people were excited (if sometimes a little confused) to have me there. The skills I built during build week gave me confidence to continue as a part of Formula, while still upholding my role on the Business Team.

Manufacturing Season – Chassis Build Team

During Winter Quarter (colloquially known as 'Manufacturing Season' within the team) I was a dedicated member of Formula's chassis subsystem. The chassis team is known as the workhorse of Formula– endless hours of sanding composite, grueling late-night hours, and more carbon fibers than I can count.

I distinctly remember the 10+ hour wet layup we did to make the molds for our chassis, which was a ground-up redesign of the previous year's: seemingly endless plies of tooling carbon, no breaks between resin batches, and being so tired I could barely stand by the end of the night.

Aside from gaining a significant amount of experience in composite manufacturing, being a part of chassis taught me the importance of perserverance and that the right team makes even the most tedious work a ton of fun. Pictured left is me and the 2024 Chassis Subsystem with our final, wrapped chassis– I'm endlessly proud of this team and grateful I could be a part of it.

Livery Senior Project

Towards the end of January, I began to brainstorm ideas for my senior project. At this point, I was now spending multiple nights a week in The Hangar, and I knew I wanted to use this project to contribute to Cal Poly Racing. Since my major had a strong emphasis on the Print Industry, I came to the conclusion that designing and installing the liveries for all three of Cal Poly Racing's racecars would be the perfect blend of passion and major.

This project involved designing and manufacturing liveries for Cal Poly Racing’s three vehicles: the Baja CPX24, FSAE IC, and FSAE EV, combining my passion for motorsport with my experience in design. I did extensive research on livery design, sponsor placement, and vinyl application to address the unique challenges posed by the three racecars’ geometry.

GRC 462 Activity 4: Written Project Proposal

Vanessa Belk Process Book.pdf

The files attached above are my original project proposal for my senior project, as well as my final "Process Book"– a stylized, magazine-style document that was one of the final projects of my senior project class. Both PDFs give a comprehensive overview of how I began the project, my successes (and struggles), and the final outcome. Photos of the finalized cars can be seen below.

Unveiling

Unveiling is an annual event designed to unveil our competition vehicles to the public and across our social media. This event also served as an early due date for my senior project as well– while most students in my major take 3-4 months to do their senior projects, mine had to be completed in under 2. This was to meet the deadline of Unveiling.

The final livery designs honor these vehicle’s legacy while leveraging insight from motorsport to create impactful and cohesive liveries.

As you can see on the right, our EV car looks a bit funny– this is because of the setbacks from the chassis manufacturing process, so it wasn't quite ready by the time Unveiling came around.

Cal Poly Racing with our 2024 competition vehicles.

The Final Designs

Lucie is our electric racecar. I contributed many sleepless nights in our machine shops here on campus to build the body of this car as part of the chassis subsystem. I chose a satin, color-shifting wrap for one of the base colors, pairing it with a satin black to ensure consistent finish. This color shifts between gold and green– Cal Poly’s main colors.

The Baja CPX24 is an off-roading, Baja-style vehicle that undergoes a lot of dirt and grime. There are 3 main areas that require vinyl on this vehicle: the panel behind the driver, and panels on either side of the car. The livery for the Baja car used topographical maps of Cal Poly and the surrounding area as a background, with simple geometric shapes as accents.

Leftie is the name of Cal Poly Racing’s last combustion (gas powered) car. Cal Poly Racing has been designing, building, and competing this racecar for over 30 years, so I wanted to pay homage to this heritage through a special design. By layering green and black decals over a base wrap of white, I payed tribute to the club’s history while introducing a fresh concept.

May Competition

I attended my first Formula SAE competition last May—the IC event at Michigan International Speedway. It was a multi-day event, and while the first day showed up with sun and optimism, the rest of the week brought nonstop rain and a fair amount of improvising. I spent time attending business competition presentations to better understand how top teams structured their deliverables, and took notes on what we could implement to strengthen our strategy next year. I also helped keep our team organized throughout the event—coordinating logistics, making sure we had what we needed, and checking in regularly to ensure everyone was eating, sleeping, and staying sharp.

It was the kind of real-world challenge that learn by doing is meant to prepare you for—and as someone building a career in motorsport, being trackside at Michigan International Speedway, solving problems in real time, made the stakes (and the payoff) feel very real.

Promotion to Business Team Lead

Planning for the Future

SoCal Shootout

New Beginnings

Women in Automotive & Engineering

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