The Motorsport Engineering Program at CSU has offered specialty classes in Composite Materials, Vehicle Dynamics, Racecar Vehicle Dynamics, Computational Fluid Dynamics and Engines since the program started. During the summer of 2007 Professor Radford, teamed with Lucas Weidner, a professional motorsport design engineer, to develop a systems level course on racecar design. The concept was to leverage the Graduate student's knowledge gained in each of the specialty classes, and look at how those concepts and tools are used within the industry to design and develop a racecar.
Professor Radford and Mr. Weidner shared lecture duties throughout the semester. The pair discussed topics ranging from overall racecar design approaches to design details at the component-level. Many case studies were presented and discussed. Students worked individually and in small teams throughout the first portion of the semester and then the 9 students worked together to produce the single final project, a D-Sport design study. During the discussion of racecar track preparation, a well-known Team Engineer, Chris Lerch, discussed the activities of a typical race weekend, including showing test data to explain racecar setup changes.