By Brooke Bastedo
September 16, 2025
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Building a car may seem simple. Four wheels, a Mario Kart steering wheel and a driver. 
From the outside it can look easy. 
The Gator Motorsports team has a humble history that may corroborate this narrative. Starting in 1991, the team operated out of a storage unit where a small team of student engineers found their start.
Small starts and humble beginnings are the legacy the team stands on today in the Official Gator Motorsports Garage tucked between the University of Florida’s biggest names: the Stephen O’Connell Center and Ben Hill Griffin Stadium. 
Thousands of students walk past the building every day, but for some, it is the culmination of a life’s worth of passion and years of hard work. 
The team’s mission is to build a new car from scratch every year. This goal is lofty and  requires a year’s worth of time, effort and drive. 
The team designs, builds and races a Formula-style race car for the Formula SAE Competition in Brooklyn, Michigan. The car is tested in a variety of categories, including design, acceleration and fuel economy, against more than 100 college teams that travel to the Michigan International Speedway. 
In 2022, GMS achieved its highest finish at the competition, coming in third overall. This year, team captain and fourth-year materials science and engineering major Daniel Patel aims to lead the team back to the podium. Despite being the oldest member of GMS, Patel, 21, has never seen the team finish in the top three. 
At GMS, he manages an average of 40 engineers each week and also oversees the two chief engineers, Lucja Stawikowska and Kevin Lizardo. The team operates with an open-door policy for interested applicants. 
“Some people have misconceptions,” Patel said. “A lot of people don’t know that we’re EV (electric vehicles), that’s a major one.”
Despite the history surrounding the team, it is not one afraid of change. Four years ago, just before the current leadership staff came onto the team, GMS switched from racing a traditional internal combustion engine to electric vehicles. 
This year, the team aims to make another big adjustment to the mechanics of the car. Despite using an off-the-shelf inverter throughout the past, the team hopes to design a custom inverter for this season’s car, the Michigan 26. 
Stawikowska, 20, the tractive chief engineer, is a fourth-year mechanical engineering student, and her team is spearheading the design initiative. 
An inverter is responsible for directing the electric current from the car’s battery pack and turning it into an alternating current, which is necessary for the motor. 
“It is a significant feat, especially for the electrical team of the car,” Stawikowska said. “It’ll give us more insight into what it’s actually doing and hopefully allow us to fix some of the issues we’ve had.” 
The Michigan 25’s reliability presented challenges earlier this year at the competition. By creating a custom inverter, the electrical team will have access to more data. This allows them to make adjustments more readily. 
In addition to designing the inverter, the electrical team will design a custom housing unit. A large undertaking, the team expects to see improvements in the car’s performance from last year. 
An off-track category the team seeks to improve is the business presentation portion of the Formula SAE Competition. Despite placing 25th overall in the May competition, GMS ranked 38th in the Business Presentation category. 
“It’s how we influence a lot of our decisions is what’s worth the most amount of points,” Patel said. “We didn’t focus a lot on it [the business presentation], but it was worth over 100 points.” 
This year, the team has created a more comprehensive business presentation for the 2026 competition. Their efforts include keeping more accurate records of data points across departments and systems. 
GMS president Nicole Valdes, a junior mechanical engineering student, got involved with motorsports through a mentor during her freshman year. Rachael Carlin, a former UF aerospace engineering student, was the inspiration behind Valdes’ desire to serve the GMS community. 
“She taught me a lot of things, and I decided that I wanted to be able to take care of the team,” Valdes, 20,  said. “The best approach seemed to be to follow the footsteps of someone who I found very inspiring.” 
Carlin met Valdes while serving as the GMS Vice President, a position Valdes took more than a year later. For two years, Valdes observed the way Carlin chose to serve the team with intentional conversations and decisive actions. 
From long hours on countless days of the week to ensuring that every member of the team feels seen, Valdes picked up on the most important aspects of leadership. Even now, as the team president, she
continues to learn from those around her. 
GMS’s three principles are dedication, ingenuity and perseverance. The team uses these principles as fuel to accomplish the united goal of building the best formula-style race car. 
“We commit a lot of hours to the shop,” Valdes said. “We aren’t getting paid to do this. We all are here because we are volunteering to do it … and that takes a lot of passion.” 
Category: Auto Racing, Gator Sports, Motor Sports
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