Race. Wreck. Rebuild. Repeat.

With those four words Nick Belkoff sums up a year of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County’s Baja Racing team.

He is one of several UMBC students taking part in Baja SAE, an international collegiate design competition organized by the Society of Automotive Engineers that involves students with designing, constructing and testing a prototype, single-seat off-road vehicle.

Although the racing team is considered an extracurricular activity for which students do not receive class credit, designing and building a 320-pound dune buggy is serious business that team members take, well, very seriously.

“The project allows members to apply classroom theory to a real-world problems while enhancing teamwork and project management skills,” team UMBC’s website explains.

The opportunity to design and build a race car from scratch and to test drive it on an on-campus track and obstacle course also likely enticed students

The car is designed to climb hills and “go over a lot of bumpy stuff,” said Belkoff, 23, who is studying information systems.

The team car has a theoretical top speed of 42 mph but has only reached 35 mph because of friction loss and terrain differences, team member Natalie Rudisill explained. The 21-year-old from Hagerstown graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering in May.

“It’s simple, it’s lightweight, it’s unstoppable, basically,” said Sam Scott, 21, the team’s outgoing captain, who also graduated in May with a degree in mechanical engineering.

There are typically between 15 and 25 team members, consisting of both undergraduate and graduate students working on the project, according to UMBC. Their academic backgrounds range from mechanical and computer engineering to materials research, visual arts and management. Many of the undergraduates end up continuing their graduate studies at UMBC

UMBC started its first team in 1991 ,but it dissolved over time because there were not enough students participating. The Baja SAE team was re-established in 2002.

The competition involves three contests in the United States each year. (There are also competitions in other countries.)

UMBC has been competing in the U.S. events since 2010. As part of the contest, the teams also compete for a fictitious manufacturing contract.

For some students, being part of the racing team provides a real-life opportunity to use what they learned at UMBC. Others see it as a way to socialize and meetfellow racers and potential employers.

“It takes the stuff you’re learning in the classroom, all the theoretical math, and actually gives you a place to apply it,” said Robert Sherwood, 20, who is studying mechanical engineering. “When you’re doing Baja, you’re learning a lot more than just the equations behind things, it’s how they all relate to everything.”

The team’s first race this year was in Pittsburg, Kan. (They skipped the second contest in Gorman, Calif., for financial reasons; it cost too much to transport the car that far.) The final race, in Peoria, Ill., took place last month.

Afterward, members got together to prepare for next year. They will spend the summer using three-dimensional modeling software to come up with a new design and will try to have a car on the ground by February and running by April, when the competition season starts.

The car costs about $7,000 to build, but the team spends about another $20,000 on parts, testing and tuning. The team gets some funding from the university and substantial support from sponsors.

Although team UMBC has not come in first in the overall competition, it has come in first in multiple sub-categories — it finished “first in cost” last May at the competition in Kansas — and has consistently ranked top 20 overall.

All teams that take part in the competitions — there are about 110 around the world — use the same $628 10-horsepower, Intek Model 19 engine, donated by Briggs & Stratton Corp. On the first day of competition, the engine is inspected and team members make their sales pitch, to convince entrepreneurial investors to — hypothetically — purchase 4,000 cars in a format similar to the television show “Shark Tank.”

“The judges are usually less dramatic,” Belkoff said.

The team is asked about its manufacturing, sales, design, marketing and financial plans over the course of the presentation.

On the second day, the vehicle is inspected to make sure it meets competition rules and that the brakes work and are able to stop abruptly. It also goes through a cost evaluation focused on producing the least expensive vehicle. The third day is known as “Dynamic Day,” a series of timed events that measure the car’s acceleration, maneuverability and suspension. The final day is the endurance race when the machines run an obstacle course, typically two to three miles long, for four hours. Whichever team logs the most laps wins. If a car breaks down, the team can fix the car and send it back out onto the track.

Scott, who has driven the endurance race, said he’s always thinking about about how aggressively or conservatively he should drive on the track.

“It’s a lot of fun, but you have to be careful because as a driver you want to push the car as hard as you can, but you also have to have in the back of your mind the entire time, that if I break the car, I have to get out and fix it,” he said. “My team’s going to be mad at me if I break it.”

The end of the racing season is a time of transition. Some members, including Scott and Rudisill, graduate and get jobs. Scott will be working as a mechanical engineer at Stanley, Black and Decker in Towson, while Rudisill will be designing and updating heating, cooling and ventilation systems with a facilities department at the Department of Defense.

Neil Rothman, professor of practice of mechanical engineering and the team’s faculty adviser, said companies looking for new employees often contact him to recruit members of the racing team.

Being on the team gives students “real engineering experience” he said. “After years on the teams they really know how to apply what they learned to real world problems.”

Younger team members such as Sherwood will step up and take leadership roles as they begin preparations for next year. The team plans to modify its current car for 2018 rather than build a new one, as it did the past three years.

“We’ll look at the failures we had and fix them,” Sherwood said. “We’ll do testing and data collection, seeing how and why the car failed so we can re-engineer next year’s car to be better and stronger.”

jbleiweis@baltsun.com