This years champion, Homestead High School, is the rare high school team amongst the collegiate field. Their car lapped at an average speed of about 25mph and recorded an amazing 1539.88 miles per gallon of fuel consumed, beating their previous record by nearly 250 miles per gallon. . Zipp engineer Josh Poertner jumped at the chance to work with the team when approached by them some 6 months ago. "I competed in Formula SAE (an open wheel race car design contest) in college and feel that I learned more in that year than in the 4 years of school combined. Anybody can talk about some outlandish idea or even sketch it out on paper, but when you have to then choose the materials, make tooling, and actually produce something…the whole world as you know it changes" said Poertner.

Zipp was approached by the team for their ceramic ball bearing technology used in the Z3 and Z4 wheelsets after one of the team members read about the wheels on the internet. Since the cars run under power for only brief intervals, and then coast as far as possible, the rolling friction of the bearings, and free-wheel action of the hubs can be the difference between winning and losing the contest. The Zipp ceramic bearings are over 40% harder than steel balls, but more importantly they are over 1000 times rounder! Combined with the ability of the bearings to be run with small quantities of light oil instead of grease, the total power savings for 4 bearing cartridges in the rear hub alone was nearly 1 watt of power.

Just as a cyclist saves calories by maximizing the efficiencies of his bicycle, the supermileage car saves fuel through combined maximization of drag forces. The car will power itself to around 30mph and then coast down to around 20mph before firing the engine again. The big differences come from the amount of time of engine burn to accelerate, and more so during the coast down period. The Homestead car takes nearly 2 miles to coast from 30mph to 20mph on the less than perfect pavement at Indiana Raceway Park, meaning that a 1 watt efficiency gain could be worth an extra hundred meters or more per run.

"The problem solving skills and reasoning abilities of these kids is phenomenal." said Poertner, "It just blows me away to see the excitement and interest in the technology, not to mention that they graduate high school with better a better grasp of the reality of these technologies than most of us had when we graduated from college."

Zipp would especially like to thank Steve Lake, the team's fearless faculty advisor. He has contributed countless hours of his personal time, effort, and knowledge to this cause. It is through the work and dedication of Steve and other educators that we are all ensured a bright future.