Thanks Rick,
I'm attending a seminar on Race Car Vehicle Dynamics (4 INTENSE days of information regarding tires, aerodynamics, kinematics, and data acquisition), so I don't have time to post much, but there will be a detailed write up to follow.
In summary, we learned a lot at this competition. We managed to build a car in 4 months, just the wrong four months. You need to have as much testing time (if not more) than build and design time in order to do well at this competition. One of the Austrian teams was rumored to have more than $100K in their car (composite rims, carbon fiber monocoque, telemetry, titanium suspension components, etc.).