Sequoyah Places First in The United States Two Years Running in H2 Grand Prix
The Sequoyah H2 Grand Prix team qualified for the World Finals this year, which was held in Chemnitz, Germany, in August. The team made an excellent showing, placing 1st in America and 9th in the world.
The H2 team started building their car long before the World Finals. Eric Yang ’26, a driver on the H2 team, explained that work on the car “started in the second semester [early 2025], and [they] worked on it whenever [they] could.” But before the H2 team could compete at the World Finals, they had to qualify for it. Andrew Fyke ’26, another driver on the H2 team, said, “We had to qualify for Worlds through States. So, the top two [teams] in California made it to Worlds.” While the team prepares for Worlds all year, they focus on one race at a time. After each race, a lot of work goes into fixing anything that did not go well during the race. Fyke mentioned that “there’s a lot of work that happened before the summer after States to make changes to the car for Worlds.” There were even a couple of sessions over the summer that consisted of driving practice and packing for Worlds. Eurus Wang ’27, a mechanic for the H2 team, expressed how much they had to think about when packing so the team would “have the tools [they would] need to face all kinds of situations.”
The team arrived at the event early and was able to get time driving on the track before the competition to get warmed up. But before the race could start, there were formalities. Fyke noted that they had to “do a round of judging, which is showing the car to a panel of judges, explaining various decisions made with the construction of the car.” Yang added that they also had to bring the car to the judges for inspection, which examined things like the car’s “ride height, length, [and] wheel width.” After all that, the competition could finally start.
The World Finals was six hours long and included about 35 cars split into two races. The two drivers, Yang and Fyke, switched off about every hour during the competition. One person watched the live times of each lap and relayed the information to the drivers to tell them what to do. There were also two mechanics who were on call to change batteries and hydro sticks and deal with any problems that arose with the car during competition. Yang shared that during the World Finals, “the other drivers were not aggressive, but they didn't care too much about crashing.” This raised issues for many teams, including Sequoyah, because cars were being damaged far more frequently than normal.
The main issue with Sequoyah’s car at Worlds was its durability. Abraham Orozco, the coach of the H2 team, reflected, “We learned quickly that our car was definitely more on the sensitive side.” All of the crashes were taking a toll on the car. Fyke clarified that the car was on par speed-wise with the top teams, but the car being too fragile “meant that [they] weren't able to stay on track long enough to actually make use of that speed.”
While the team’s final result as national champions was very impressive, and the consensus of teammates was that they did well with what they had, they believe there is plenty to improve on. They will take all the lessons learned from this year and apply them to next year’s competition.