Justin
Padgett

Leadership

I joined as a general member. My first position was Treasurer, then design consultant, then merchandise lead alongside Vice President. By my last years I was holding Vice President, fabricator, mechanic, and merchandise simultaneously — and then President on top of all of it.

The roles stacked rather than handed off, which is what running a club that had to rebuild itself actually looks like. Whoever could do a job kept doing it while taking on the next one.

As President I directed a 17-person board across operations, finances, fabrication, events, charity work, and outreach — and spent as much time developing the people who would replace me as running the thing itself.

General member → Treasurer → Design Consultant → Merchandise Lead → Vice President → President

Self-Funding Program

The university cut the annual allocation to $500 — less than one event cost. The spending wasn't the problem; the funding model was. I founded a merchandise operation to replace it, developed the product line, and restored an unused campus screen printer so production stayed in-house while capital exposure was highest. It generated $4,000–$5,000 per semester and covered debt service on two club vehicles.

Root cause → make vs. buy → production → debt service

Endurance Racing League

Launched in partnership with the Rossin College of Engineering. I assigned proposal and budget development to my secretary, treasurer, and vice president, secured departmental approval and funding, then handed execution to the board that replaced me and stayed on as an advisor.

Proposal · budget · approval · succession

Miata Teaching Platform

Acquired a 1998 Miata and swapped an NB engine into the NA chassis to build a shared platform for teaching manual driving and basic maintenance to members who had never worked on a car.

Engine swap · instruction platform

Club Fabrication

Design and fabrication lead on member and club vehicles: exhaust systems, bumpers, strut braces, seat brackets, and one-off replacements for parts that no longer exist. Also sole instructor for the club's fabrication lessons.

One-off parts · welding · instruction

Building the Community

The club was never really about cars. Cars were the excuse. The point was giving people somewhere to belong, and a reason to show up and work on something together.

That meant charity events, maintenance clinics for students who could not afford a shop, teaching members to drive manual, fabrication lessons, go-kart outings, and outreach and networking events. Some members arrived having never opened a hood, and left able to do their own work.

It went from defunct to one of the largest organizations on campus, which is the outcome I am proudest of. Everything else on this page — the funding operation, the racing league, the shop projects — existed to make that possible.

Charity events · maintenance clinics · driving instruction · outreach

Aerodynamics

My senior capstone project: the first complete aero package in Lehigh Racing's history, built by a four-engineer group where I was fabrication and manufacturing lead. It ran at Formula SAE Michigan and passed tech inspection.

Covered in full under Built Work — LR-26 Aerodynamics Package

Visual Identity & Livery

Designed the team's full visual identity — a black, gold, and silver livery drawing on the 1974 Lotus 72, a redesigned team logo, and a custom apparel line. The palette on this site comes from that scheme.

Livery · logo · apparel · Photoshop

Merchandise Design

Designed the team's apparel line alongside the livery and logo, so the identity carried off the car and onto the people around it. Same black, gold, and silver scheme, adapted to garments rather than bodywork.

A team that looks like a team recruits better and gets remembered at competition, and the merchandise was the cheapest part of that to get right.

Apparel design · brand identity · Photoshop

Surface Finishing & Body Panels

Painted and finished the competition car, color-matching to the powder-coated gold chassis. Carried carbon panels through epoxy seal, progressive sanding, clear coat, and polishing to a mirror finish, and applied aircraft fabric body panels as a lighter replacement.

Paint · progressive sand · clear · aircraft fabric

Driving & Vehicle Dynamics

One of the team's drivers, and the member with the most prior vehicle dynamics experience — the only one in the four-person aero group with any. Translated test data into predicted vehicle response and worked out how aero changes would affect handling.

Our team captain also had strong dynamics knowledge and made good calls on balance without prior driving experience; final say on balance targets was theirs.

Test data → predicted response → balance targets