A University of Alberta race car has left its Calgary rival in the dust.

Engineering students from U of A and University of Calgary faced off at an Edmonton-area raceway yes­terday to determine which school has the best Formula-style car.,

The U of A car, dubbed Knight Rider, won overall, including the one-lap time trial with a time of 46.56 seconds, beating Calgary's time of 50.16 seconds.

"It's awesome," said Marcus Beaudry, the U of A team's project leader.

Yesterday's battle of Alberta saw the student engineers test their cars for acceleration and endurance at the Stratotech Racing Park near Fort Saskatchewan.

Edmonton's car, built from the ground up by the university's en­gineering students, is called Knight Rider, because of the dash controls resembling KITT from the TV series of the same name.

The white racing machine can travel at a maximum speed of 160 km/h and can roar from zero to 100 km/h in about 3.9 seconds.

U of A mechanical students have been building custom race cars each year since 1999.

"It's really fun — a very re-warding experience after the many hours you put in," said Josh Dyck, one of the team's drivers and a mechanical engineering stu­dent going into his fourth year at the U of A.

Beaudry figured Edmonton's race car won because it's 130 pounds lighter than Calgary's and the engine is tuned.

The $100,000 car took two years and about 12,000 man hours be­tween 20 people to bring to life.

An international racing competition in June saw Knight Rider place 15th out of 76 teams from around the world, and it was named best in Canada overall.

The annual event was held at California's Auto Club Speedway at the Formula Society of Automo­tive Engineers West Competition.

—Kristy Brownlee, 24 hours