Thirty-eight weekends a year, John Klausmeier ’04, mechanical engineering, gets a trackside view to NASCAR’s fiercest races, carefully watching a high performance Chevrolet SS that he has tuned sweep into the curves at nearly 200 miles per hour.

Growing up, Klausmeier loved diving underneath the hoods of automobiles to find ways to make them go faster. That interest (and his time at UMBC) helped him find a career in which he travels the country’s NASCAR circuit as a lead race engineer for one of the sport’s most successful drivers – Danica Patrick – and her #10 car.

Klausmeier found his passion for automobiles and how they work at his parents’ repair shop in Perry Hall. The shop was where he tinkered with carburetors and other components to figure how they worked, and how they could work better.

When it came time for college, “I felt that studying engineering would be a catalyst for merging something I had as a hobby into a career,” he says.

UMBC’s mechanical engineering program was a perfect place for Klausmeier to accelerate into a career in the highly competitive world of NASCAR. “I was able to gear my course work at UMBC to what I saw would help me in the industry,” he recalls. The degree gave Klausmeier a solid grounding in physics, engineering and materials science that he has applied to all aspects of automotive performance.

In addition to the science, there was the software. At UMBC Klausmeier was able to train on the same software that the pit crews themselves use to monitor their fast-moving machines. The university was also an access point to an invaluable internship with NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt, Jr.’s race team.

In fact, Klausmeier’s internship led directly to a job as an aerodynamics engineer with Earnhardt after he graduated in 2004. He moved to Charlotte, N.C. – a city that many of the NASCAR racing teams call home.

Klausmeier is one of the youngest lead race engineers in NASCAR, working for Stewart-Haas Racing, run by famed NASCAR driver Tony Stewart. Though Stewart-Haas maintains four teams, Klausmeier works primarily with Patrick – one of the most successful and visible drivers on the circuit and the only woman to win an IndyCar Series race – the 2008 Indy Japan 300.

As lead race engineer, John tweaks the performance of Patrick’s No. 10 car, filling out a playbook using lessons learned from trial runs, wind tunnel tests and many computational simulations. Drivers are only allowed so much time to test run a car on a track, so a lot of work must be done modeling the vehicle’s behavior using a computer.

As a sport, NASCAR has its roots in drivers running moonshine through back country roads, and today’s drivers still seek any edge to stay just a little ahead of each other – if not the law.

“The competition has evolved,” Klausmeier observes. “You have to get to the end result a lot quicker. It’s very engineering driven.”

Stewart-Haas keeps a private airplane to transport the car and the team to the next race. Each week brings a different track, with different characteristics that stress the automobile. “We’re always faced with a different problem,” says Klausmeier. “There is so much competition it is basically like having an exam every week that you have to be prepared for.”

On race day, Klausmeier is a cool head in the noise and color, taking in the feedback both from Patrick behind the wheel and from what the car sensors are showing. Should the shocks or struts be adjusted? How many tires should be changed out at the next pit-stop? How much fuel should be added?

Klausmeier adds that UMBC also gave him a solid work ethic along with this expertise. Both qualities – and his passion for the sport – have prepared him well for the demanding life of a traveling race car team.

“If you have a good technical background and have a good hands-on approach, you’ll do well in this sport,” he says.

— Joab Jackson ’90

Read the full issue of the Summer 2014 UMBC Magazine.

Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of three posts from Lexi, our summer intern here in the Alumni Communications office. She’ll be sharing some of her stories and experiences at UMBC over the coming weeks.

Let me introduce myself. Hi, I’m Lexi.
I’m a 21 year old from Camden, Delaware,
where nothing exciting ever really happens, except for a few weekends each year. Slowly but surely, events like NASCAR and the Firefly Music Festival are putting the little old diamond state on the map, and less and less people ask me which state Delaware is in.

I’ll give you a little background info about myself. I’m an only child, sans the mythical only-child syndrome, and grew up with a veterinarian for a dad and the best mom a girl could ever ask for. My shoes of choice are barn boots, and I have a caught more than a few snakes in my time. My home is more or less a farm. Or a zoo. It just depends on the day. We have five dogs, two cats, a pond full of fish, honeybees, three horses, and a donkey, give or take a wandering raccoon or opossum.

While we don’t actually harvest crops or breed cattle, my home used to be in the agricultural heart of Delaware. Less than a mile away is a massive potato farm. Turn left from there, and you’re surrounded by the biggest stalks of corn you could possibly imagine. Sure, there’s still a pretty big population near us, and we don’t live on a dirt road, but on the right day it’s as if you’re isolated from the hustle and bustle cities are known for. But that’s home to me. So for me, Baltimore was a little bit of an eye-opener.

I came to UMBC not really understanding how close I was to the city. As a freshman, I didn’t have a car, so I relied on upperclassmen friends to take me wherever I needed to go. Come sophomore year when I had my own car, I had no idea where anything was. I never bothered to learn the back roads or highways, because I never needed to know. I used my phone’s GPS to get me to the Arbutus Wal-Mart. I tried to get to an art store for a class, and my lack of knowledge about traffic and the number of different highways there are turned a 20-minute trip turned into a two-hour adventure.

Delaware has one, two-lane highway without stoplights. Route one runs north to south through the state and can take you wherever it is you need to go. Just to get to the art store I had to take four different highways. I learned how to merge really quickly. I also learned that my GPS doesn’t work well in cities. After being told to turn right, go straight and then turn left, and go through a hotel lobby, all while sitting at the same traffic light for five minutes, I finally caved and pulled out the map I stash in my car to find the best back roads. With much honking, yelling, and arm waving, I somehow cut across three lanes to get where I needed to go. Drivers in Baltimore seemed much more uptight than Delawareans. But, then again, I probably deserved all the dirty looks.

Besides the minor directional issues, my trip to the art store was relatively uneventful until I had to park (parallel park, at that). That’s probably a story left for a better time, though.

-Lexi Coon