SMU Students' Formula One-style Racecar, Trailer Stolen From Northeast Dallas

A Formula One-style race car designed and built by a team of Southern Methodist University students was stolen over the Christmas holiday.The car, Beatrix, was stolen between 1 p.m. Sunday and 1 p.m. Tuesday from the 5500 block of Dyer Street, near U.S. Highway 75, the Hilltop Motorsports team said on Facebook. The team's 16-foot silver trailer was also missing. It contained the car and everything required to race it including thousands of dollars worth of tools, driver safety and pit equipment and race fuel, said Molly Phillips, spokeswoman for the Lyle School of Engineering.Alexis Madrigal, the team's chief engineer, said he noticed the trailer was gone when he stopped by his apartment Tuesday morning, the SMU Daily Campus reported. Madrigal said the trailer and everything in it is worth about $55,000. The car alone cost about $50,000 to build."The team is hopeful that the trailer and all its belongings are found and are still intact, but we have to start planning how we will approach this year's build now that our resources have changed," he told the student paper.Hilltop Motorsports is a team of about 30 SMU students who are putting their skills together to develop a small race car that will be judged in a number of tests at the annual Formula SAE competition in June, according to the team's website.   Continue reading...