Blue Jay Racing, or Baja SAE, is a student club in which members design an off-road single seat vehicle over the course of a year. The club is…
Blue Jay Racing, or Baja SAE, is a student club in which members design an off-road single seat vehicle over the course of a year. The club is part of an organization called SAE International. Members spend the summer and fall designing the next year's car, the winter manufacturing the vehicle and testing it, and the spring and early fall competing. Recently, Blue Jay Racing retired its 2026 car. The leading purpose of Blue Jay Racing is to develop the engineering skills of club members.
The team is primarily made up of Mechanical Engineering majors looking to gain experience in the field. Junior and Blue Jay Racing member Andre Hurst says the club is particularly useful for students hoping to go into the engineering industry after graduation. "A lot of what we do here is similar to the engineering that students will be doing if they decide to go into industry," said Hurst. "No one comes into Baja as a good engineer.
The goal is that Baja turns you into a good engineer, and then you enter into industry as a good engineer." New member and junior Christian Nambo-Reyes emphasized the effort that older club members put in to teach those who have just joined. Although Nambo-Reyes has been enthusiastic about cars and their mechanics for years, this effort for inclusion did not go unnoticed by him. "They don't expect you to know anything. They teach you the basics, what they want you to do," said Nambo-Reyes.
"They walk you through everything." This past year, Blue Jay Racing's car placed 4th overall in the 2026 season, where the group competed against around 200 international university teams under the Baja SAE umbrella. Each season is made up of three different four-day competitions: one on the East Coast, one on the West Coast and one in the middle of the country. In 2026, the Blue Jay Racing team traveled to Oregon in May, Rochester, N.Y. in June and Ohio in September.
Each competition is made up of a series of events designed to test different components of the car. Over the first two days, the car doesn't drive at all.
This is a source-linked briefing. Read the original report from Johns Hopkins University .