A fresh look at the Grand Prix

In the basement of Shreve Residence Hall, you’ll find a room full of tools, retired go-kart frames, decades old trophies, running go-karts and a Purdue Grand Prix racing team almost entirely composed of freshmen.

Reid Mizelle, co-director and driver for Shrevehart Racing is one of them.

Joining a racing team can feel intimidating. Mizelle, a freshman in first-year engineering, said that it feels like you need to have been racing your whole life or already know how to build cars.

“Down here, you can basically, from any status, just hop in and do hands-on,” Mizelle.

Despite being mainly freshmen, with the upcoming annual Grand Prix, Shrevehart Racing is looking to improve on their previous year's fifth-place finish.

“I’m feeling super confident, because that same kart that placed fifth last year, we did a huge upgrade,” Mizelle said. “We have enough budget in order to support ourselves and do some big upgrades to help give us new big performance boosts. We also have Trevor.”

Freshman in first-year engineering Trevor Smyth is the driver for Kart 33 and has a lot of experience behind the wheel. He started six years ago in a rental league with his dad which has made their bond stronger.

Along with his numerous hours behind the wheel, Smyth is also driving a kart that he built with his dad.

“They did a phenomenal job,” Mizelle said, “putting a kart together that basically passed tech inspection on the first go.”

Shrevehart Racing is a part of Shreve Club, but it is open for all students to join including those who are entirely new to racing.

“We’re here to win, but we’re also here to learn and have fun,” Mizelle said. “Our main focus is basically prepping a bunch of freshmen who come in here and maybe have some knowledge, some experience, no experience, completely separate majors and to just get in here and get down working on the karts.”

There are non-freshmen on the team like sophomore in aeronautical engineering technology and co-director Logan Dee who was a part of Shrevehart last year.

“After quite a failure of the first semester me and three other co-directors came in, and we basically revamped the whole team in one semester last year, and ended up having a fifth-place kart,” Dee said.

Dee came back to act as a mentor for the incoming freshmen and to make sure they have all the information they need to be successful this year.

“Everybody else down here is a freshman right now, and nobody has connections as a freshmen, so it’s really hard to get engines rebuilt, find places to source parts, all kinds of things like that,” Dee said, “but really it’s the best team to find a starting point for anybody because you can go from here and join another team.”

While the race is just a month away they are also focused on long-term goals.

“There’s a couple upgrades that we are thinking about,” Mizzelle said. “We’re thinking about getting new exhausts, new air boxes, we’re gonna get new axles, potentially get magnesium hubs.”

Dee said they’re trying to build a base for future members to come in and learn everything they need about the parts.

“Any decision that we’re making, financially speaking, all of them are keeping in mind that it’s going to last for the next five years,” said freshman in first-year engineering and co-director Sai Bagde.

As with many Grand Prix teams, there are limited spots for every position, but for Shrevehart, that doesn’t stop anyone from being able to come in and work on the karts.

The team emphasizes that anyone is welcome to come help build during shop hours even if they are not in the pit. Bagde said that they encourage people to learn whatever they can.

“We know how hard it is for a lot of people of different groups to get into racing,” Mizelle said. “We are very happy to be a place where we can embody a bunch of different and diverse people in racing.”