A new generation of students has revived , working to build the program’s first race car in 15 years while gaining hands-on engineering experience along the way.
When Ibrahim Rfifi joined Lassonde Motorsports – 91ɫ’s student-led Formula Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) team at the – in his first year, he expected to find the kind of hands-on program common at many engineering schools, where students design, build and compete with a race car while applying concepts learned in the classroom.
Instead, he found a group still building the structure needed to make that possible. Despite attempts since Lassonde opened in 2012, the team had never completed a vehicle or entered a Formula SAE competition.
Rfifi, along with fellow Lassonde student Michael Rozenfeld, decided to change that.
As president of the group in early 2025, Rififi, now a third-year mechanical engineering student, led an effort to rebuild the organization. He emailed hundreds of students across the Lassonde community inviting them to help relaunch Lassonde Motorsports.
He made a passionate case for renewed commitment to the program and outlined a plan to guide the group toward developing a competitive Formula SAE vehicle through two core principles: consistency and organization. He also stressed the value the group could provide in practical experience, where students could apply classroom concepts while developing skills valued by employers.
Rfifi and Rozenfeld, the club's vice-president, received more than 100 expressions of interest from students across a range of engineering disciplines. Membership was narrowed down to roughly 70 students, prioritizing those most willing to commit to an organized, accountable engineering program built on sustained contribution. That approach, Rfifi says, was essential to the team’s long-term viability and ability to build a complete vehicle.
Attention then shifted to organization. Members were divided into five groups, each focused on a specific subsystem of a Formula SAE race car, creating clear divisions that reflect how a vehicle is built in the real world. Leadership within each group was split between two student leads, a framework intended to ensure progress and accountability. The groups looked after powertrain, vehicle dynamics, body and aerodynamics, and research and development.
With organization and membership in place, the program shifted its focus to training. “Most of us had never worked on a car before,” Rozenfeld says. “Honestly, we all started at practically zero on the skill scale.”
Workshops and weekly design sessions led by team leads and more experienced members became a core part of skill development for newer recruits. Sessions focused on computer-aided design, simulation and how components were prepared for fabrication, were designed to reduce barriers while steadily building technical capability.
Learning extended beyond the University through research lab visits, industry nights and technical tours that connected students with engineering environments and the aerospace, energy and advanced manufacturing sectors.
For Rfifi and Rozenfeld, these opportunities fulfilled a broader goal. “These hands-on learning experiences show students what engineering looks like outside of textbooks,” says Rfifi.
With restructuring, committed membership and ongoing training in place, 2025 was spent working toward the milestone that had defined its revival: completing its first Formula SAE race car.
University teams from around the world build race cars specifically for Formula SAE competitions, a global student engineering series where vehicles are evaluated on both design and real-world performance.
Guided by an entry deadline, Lassonde Motorsports set its sights on the Formula SAE Michigan 2026 competition, held each May, as its first competitive entry point. The group is in the final stages of its project, which will ship to Michigan to compete against more than 100 other universities.
While expectations are measured – Rfifi says even passing technical inspection would be an accomplishment – the team feels it has already achieved something significant given its journey. “Just getting to the competition with a completed vehicle is already a huge achievement,” Rfifi says.
Whatever the outcome, he and Rozenfeld sees Lassonde Motorsports as the beginning of a longer-term program and has set a goal to make the group a lasting fixture within the engineering school. Future plans include expanding into additional competition categories, such as electric vehicle development, alongside creating a more permanent operational structure that can be passed from one cohort of students to the next.
“A first-year student should be able to come in and find a thriving motorsports team,” Rfifi says. After leading its rebuild, he hopes the result is a program that offers students experiential engineering experience, structured learning and a place to apply their skills in a real-world setting.
“There are people waiting for an opportunity like this,” says Rozenfeld.