{"id":96680,"date":"2014-09-22T11:00:03","date_gmt":"2014-09-22T15:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=96680"},"modified":"2015-12-03T14:32:10","modified_gmt":"2015-12-03T19:32:10","slug":"jay-leno-cruises-around-campus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2014\/09\/jay-leno-cruises-around-campus\/","title":{"rendered":"Jay Leno Cruises Around Campus"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe title=\"Jay Leno Cruises Around UConn in a Student-Built Race Car\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/CFK3l_Bn7Xg?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Acclaimed TV late night show host, stand-up comedian, and passionate auto collector Jay Leno took a quick tour of the UConn campus Saturday night prior to his sold-out show at the Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts &#8211; and by quick, we mean race car fast.<\/p>\n<p>About two hours before his Family Weekend performance in Storrs, Leno met with UConn engineering students who designed, built, and recently raced a Formula SAE open wheel car in an international competition at Michigan International Speedway. The UConn team, led by Thomas Mealy, a senior majoring in mechanical engineering, placed 20th overall out of 120 collegiate teams. Cars were judged based on their design, presentation, performance, and other aspects.<\/p>\n<p>But to truly appreciate the carbon-fiber car you need to drive it, and Leno was game, sliding behind the wheel for a few impromptu laps around campus that at times pressed the speed limit on local roads.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese guys heard I was in town,\u201d Leno told a local news crew after the event. \u201cThey have no idea I\u2019m a comedian. They just know me as a car guy. They asked me to stop by and I was honored to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Comedian Jay Leno tried out a student-built car while visiting UConn as a speaker during Family Weekend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":96685,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1866,2234,70],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[72],"class_list":["post-96680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-engr","category-university-life","category-video"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-10 13:48:35","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96680"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96680\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":96692,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96680\/revisions\/96692"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/96685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96680"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=96680"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=96680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}