First Let me tell you what is SUPRA. SUPRA is a competition arranged by Society of Automobile Engineers India (SAEINDIA) every year where the undergraduate students' teams participate. The competition's goal is to design and manufacture a formula grade race car by the students. The competition has one important rule and that is the designs should be made by the students only. This competition make a great base for the future engineers to show their skills and some even get placed as CEO's of many big automobile companies come to this event. The Volkswagen India's head Mr. Sirish Vissa is the head judge of the competition!
My college never had participated in such competition before 2015. The first team was the one who participated in BAJA 2015 which is for Off-road vehicles but sadly they failed to qualify due to lack of guidance and misguidance by teams of our neighbouring colleges. Ours was the team participating in SUPRA and we were very happy as we were starting a trend of competition in the college. 20th September 2014 was the date we registered for the competition and it was the last date of registration. We were given a choice by our professor guide that whether we do it this time fail and go for higher scores next time or we do it on the first attempt. The whole team was very enthusiastic and everyone said to do it in first. There was also another reason for doing it in first time and it was that if we do not succeed in our first attempt then it will be a great danger for the second team to even form for next year and the dreams of making a Formula Grade Race would remain only a dream for us. We started working the day after the registrations ended as the Virtual round was scheduled to be in January 2015 and we had exams in between which would take around a month of our time and if decide to work after exams then we might fail to complete the task in time. We completed the design of the vehicle and it was looking magnificent. When it was 5 days for us to leave for Chennai to attend the virtual round our HOD turned on his words and said that we will not go for the round and stay and attend the college. We were sad and furious at the same time but did not lose hope and requested him a lot for 2 days and finally he agreed. The Chennai trip lasted for about a week as we had to go 2 days early to renew the memberships of Rujul and Priti as the competition needed a +1 year of membership. I was not in the virtual but went for experience the tensed weather and also helping in whatever way possible. My laptop was the only laptop in the team at that time which would run ANSYS properly and also I was the one who did the drafting of the designed model for printing. The day of the virtuals came and we were all tensed as we didn't have much sleep last night. We caught the train to go to the college where the Virtual Round was to be held. Sadly no one other than the 5 presentation members was allowed in the presentation room. We 4 extra people had to sit in the waiting room for them to come out. The results were to be announced at the end of the day as it was the last day of the virtual round. The guys came from presentation satisfied from their performance as they performed almost 10 times better than the way they did in the practice sessions last night. Saif Ansari was the one who was doubted the most of performing poorly he was the one who performed the best at the actual round. Right now I am literally feeling the same chills and tension as I am typing this experience. We sat in the waiting room which had a display which showed the score of the teams from presentation. I was staring at the screen continuously searching for our team name and score. After 10 minutes of continuous staring suddenly there came the name 'THE INTERCEPTORS' ranked 34th in 161 teams. I was dumbstruck and held hands of Akshat and Priti who sitting beside me and told them, "We are 34th!!!" They had a big aw on their faces and didn't believe. I told them to see it again as I had seen it twice already. We told the other guys and when everyone saw the rank we cheered with a little voice. The guy who was trying to entertain us in the waiting room noticed this and asked us what happened. He didn't knew we were there for the first time and when we told him why we cheered he gave a smile and just said Good! But still our rank wasn't the final rank as the scores from judge 4 and judge 5 were kept hidden. The final ranks were to be announced at the end of the day so I asked the guys to go back to the hotel and rest while I'll wait with here the professor. Our Captain was already feeling sick and still he was asking to stay but everyone took him back forcefully. Naval Sir and I dropped the guys at the bus stop and came back to the waiting room where we had to stay till the evening. The program started at 6.30pm an hour late than given. Every team was tensed as the the scores from Judge 4 & 5 can tilt the table drastically. There were small speeches and introductions before the listing. Then came Mr. Sirish Vissa who was going to release the final list. Everyone in the hall just went near the screens. Soon after he pressed the button I was searching for my team name. The names came one by one in an order. The moment it showed our named Rank Number 23 THE INTERCEPTORS!!!! I screamed in joy at Naval Sir that we qualified. We were so happy that we qualified we hugged and then ran with full strength to the College gate where we deposited our mobiles in morning to call the guys. Sir called his fiance who was also a professor at my college and I called the guys. When I told Yash Prajapati that we ranked 23rd he put the call on speaker and asked me to say it again. All the guys at the hotel screamed in joy and were celebrating. Soon I reached the hotel and we celebrated the success with a party at a hotel where we had decided to eat Chicken Tandoori last night but it was not available at that time and so we decided to go early today. We decided to keep the news as secret and tell the remaining team members when we go back but all our plan was gonna go in vain as Naval Sir was going a day earlier than us. We decided to make a video and send it over the WhatsApp group. We made a fake fight at the start the video was excellent but it was too big to be sent and our screaming due to joy made other hotel members to complain of our noise and hotel authorities had to call us to lower the noise. We made a second video with less screaming and also a short one to be sent to the group. Next Day we enjoyed it at the beach and other places.
Naval Sir had reached a day before us which led to the HOD and a senior professor into thinking that we came back but weren't attending college. So we decided to do some drama. But since we didn't had tickets back to Pune directly we had to go till Solapur first from where we come by road. Solapur was the native place of Manish and we had a chance to meet his family too. His father was the SP of the Police force of Solapur and when he congratulated us and took a photo with us we were very happy. He also arranged us a car which would drop us directly at the college and this was a very good thing for us as it would help us in our drama. We reached our college and had already called the team members to be present at the college gate to celebrate. We kept our luggage at the gate and went directly to the HOD's office to tell him the result. He congratulated us halfheartedly and told us to concentrate on studies also.
Next day we had a meeting with the Principle. Our principle Dr. R. K. Jain was very happy at our success as this had led to recognition of the college at a national level. He was the only person who visited the lab where we worked before the virtual round to see how is the work going. He also called our HOD, our Guide, our SAE Collegiate Club handler to the meeting. When they said that they were helping during the virtual preparation Principle Sir scolded them by saying that he never saw them come and they should not lie. Sir made us a surprise promise that all our manufacturing expenses will be handled by the college and we don't need to go for sponsorship. The second phase was filled with more tension as we had to arrange an engine and material for the vehicle. The welding machine was the toughest to get and to our surprise we got it as sponsorship from ADOR Welding due to their MOU with our college. Dr. Vikram Singh one of our senior professor got us the Wheels in sponsorship from Neo Wheels with his contacts in the company. He is a very respectful person. The office people were delaying us a lot in giving the money saying college is in debt and even asked us to collect the remaining fees. We were like WTF! Are they crazy and we again had to go to the Registrar of college and tell him and also Ameya Patil Sir who was a relative to the Director of the College and he sorted our problem. As I told in my last post we had luckily got a guide for manufacturing of the vehicle and this helped in the making the car a reality. Then came July 2015, the time for second round of the competition. We shipped the vehicle and even this time we arrived 2 days prior to actual competition as some work was still remaining on the vehicle. I was handling the electrical department of the vehicle and during transportation some of the switched went missing. I had to roam in Chennai for finding the right battery and the and switched for the car and it was hectic in all that humidity and heat. Our car was called the best car by the first timers by the 12 judges present at the competition but sadly were didn't qualify till the last stage due to improper time management and some safety issues.
SAEINDIA SUPRA 2015 was the best experience of my life and I will remember it till the end!!!
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