Fail Forward
“Every part we put in the car, we designed in CAD first. We built the car [from those parts] in CAD, and made sure all the systems worked first,” says Wheeler. “There was a lot of trial and error. We’d come up with performance targets, and then we’d come up with ideas to get there. Sometimes they worked, sometimes they didn’t.
As team lead, Wheeler was responsible for overseeing the performance targets, design process and parts integration. He had to make sure that everything was done according to a strict and logical schedule—like installing the roll cage before the engine.