G.P. South solar car club set for battle in Texas

Move over Team Penske, there's another Detroit-area race team coming through.

While Birmingham business magnate Roger Penske's legendary open-wheel outfit has won 15 Indy 500s, the Grosse Pointe South Sun Devils have a long road ahead of them to catch and match The Captain.

Yes, the Sun Devils' budget might be limited but its passion and creativity are unbridled.

You see, the Sun Devils — drivers, engineers, mechanics, PR personnel and fund-raisers — are still in high school. Yet they have built their own race car, nicknamed the "John Travoltage," and will compete on the high banks at Texas Motor Speedway, near Ft. Worth, this summer.

A team of 12 students from Grosse Pointe South will make the trip to participate in the 2015 Solar Car Challenge hosted by Earth Day Texas, a race for high school student-built solar cars.

More than 20 high school teams from around the country have entered the event, set for July 17-23.

"After four days of actual racing, the team with the most laps around the speedway wins," explained Sun Devils team captain Nick Morris, a senior at GP South.

"I follow Formula One — the Red Bull Racing team. We don't have their pace, but we work just as hard."

Morris, 17, who is from Grosse Pointe Farms, is a veteran on the team, having competed in the Solar Car Challenge in 2013 and in 2014, when his school finished sixth in the classic division.

He knows just how much time he and his teammates dedicate to the program, which is a club activity at Grosse Pointe South and is not funded directly by the school.

Team members design, build, market and race the solar car.

"During the build stage, I'd say I spend eight hours a day working on the car," said Morris, who has been accepted at U-M and will study mechanical engineering and computer design. "That could be 12 hours closer to race day. It's intense. All of us do it."

Solar cars are powered by the sun or auxiliary battery. The GP South car has four solar panels, can generate up to 12 horsepower and has a potential top speed of over 40 m.p.h.

"It's pretty amazing — people don't comprehend the scope of it," said Kyle Watson, a Grosse Pointe Park resident and adviser to the Sun Devils team. "Some of the solar-powered cars in other classes can hit 80."

Watson, 41, teaches at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit.

It takes sponsors with deep pockets to finance a race team, and an experienced marketing and PR department to promote it.

Enter 17-year-old Paul Attard, a senior at GP South and the son of Christie Innes, a Free Press assistant editor. Attard handles everything, from driving the solar car and reaching out to corporate sponsors and handling fund-raisers to getting the team to the racetrack.

Attard is hard at work "putting our name out in the community" and raising cash for car parts.

"We are doing everything from working with the school's mom's club to organizing car washes to increasing our presence on social media," Attard said. "We want to travel as many kids to Texas as we can, but it takes money."

As far as Attard knows, GP South is the only public high school in Michigan with a solar-car club program.

The aim of the Solar Car Challenge is to motivate students to pursue science and engineering careers.

How to help

A fund-raiser for the Grosse Pointe South Sun Devils solar car club will be 5-9 p.m. May 18 at the Atwater Pub, 1175 Lakepoint, Grosse Pointe Park (313-344-5104). Tickets are $20 at the door, and all

proceeds will go toward the solar car team. Go to gpsolarcar.com for more details on the team and to solarcarchallenge.org for more on the event at Texas Motor Speedway.

Key contributors

Grosse Pointe South has nearly two dozen students in its solar car program. Here are the leaders of this year's build project:

■Seniors Paul Attard, Kevin Biglin, Maddi Burgoyne, Elizabeth Langenburg, Nick Morris, J.D. Norris and Ethan Teranes.

■Juniors Sam Hoffman and Michael Rose.

■Freshman Ponette Rubio.