Continued updates

So finally back in the US, we have internet access on the road again and I can finish telling you about our experiences!

Qualifying...sort of

After Erin's laps and fixing the latest glitch in the car, we only had about 10 minutes left of qualifying time. Race officials hinted that even with Erin being 5 laps short of qualifying, she would be allowed to compete and we should let our 3rd driver, Wade, do a few laps. Wade got in the car and got off to a great start! Wade had never driven the car before that moment, but on the second of the two laps he had time for, he screamed past Michigan in a tight curve. It made our day!

Since qualifiers were done, we went to get the last of our passes on scrutineering and dynamic testing. That night we were informed that because we did not complete all 60 qualifying laps, we would receive a penalty and some type of other probation for the beginning of the race. We were disappointed but understood that it was only fair to the teams who had come with an already-working car!

The next day we we on display in Plano, TX and met a few past members of the team! It was good seeing some familiar faces so far from home. That night we participated in a team dinner and learned that Western Michigan was unable to qualify for the race but wanted to send some members with other teams to give them some race experience. We adopted an electrical team member, Alex, to our team.

The next day the race began, and we started in 15th place due to our low number of completed qualifier laps. Even before the start of the race, we moved up to 13th place because a few teams were late to the starting line. We weren't sure if this was good or bad! We had also received a 2 hour, 35 minute penalty to begin with to penalize us for those uncompleted laps.

Off the start line the car performed as expected...for about 3 blocks. After that we dealt with recurring electrical noise problems which shut off our motor controller and rendered the car inoperable. It was a very frustrating morning for all of us, and most of all our driver, Matt. Eventually we found a fix for the problems and were off. The morning problems had cost us about 2 hours, though. The rest of the day went well and were uneventful.

Brake Failure

One of the most exciting and terrifying days for us was the second day of the race. We made it to the checkpoint in McAlester with no problems but shortly after leaving the checkpoint, Erin started gaining on our lead vehicle after another solar car team had passed and we asked her to decrease speed. With no response we asked our lead vehicle to increase distance to avoid any close calls. Going down a hill, our dodge caravan was actually unable to outpace a coasting Sol Invictus. Erin rear-ended our lead vehicle going about 40 mph. Things quickly got frantic as we asked Erin what the problem was. She informed us that she was getting no response from our brakes and was unable to slow down. With two other teams in close proximity, the situation got more difficult. Erin swerved around a team in order to avoid another collision. The other teams frantically called to us over our CB radios wondering what was going on.

With few options and only more downhills ahead, we told Erin to run into our lead vehicle again. We wanted to slow her down gradually with the bumper and had no other obvious options. She had already tried to slow herself with the parking brake and it had been ineffective as well. Erin refused! She didn't want to damage the car any more. In the distance we saw a gradual uphill and told her to do all she could to stop on it. After about 2 miles without control the car slowly decelerated and came to a stop aside the road. After flags and cones were deployed, we ran out of the vehicles to make sure Erin was alright and to assess the problem. Race officials were already on their way, as our Observer, Chuck, had called them for help. Unable to safely work on the car aside the road, we decided it was smartest to pack up the car and work on it somewhere else. This ended our race day, and so the remaining few hours of the day were lost for racing. We were all pretty shaken up though.

One of our sponsors, Everett Glass of Clear kote, had visited us in McAlester and happened to be driving by when he saw our caravan pulled over. His house was only about 20 minutes away and Everett graciously offered his garage and home for us to work and sleep that night. We were all truly stunned and grateful! That night we discovered that all of our brake pads had been worn through in only a day and a half! We put on the harder brake pads that we had used for qualifiers and did some tweaking and repairs. We were still not quite sure how the pads had been worn down so fast, though.

The next day we made it to Neosho, MO, in time to be entered officially in the race without provisions (excepting only our 2 hr 35 min penalty). Western Michigan's braking system experts came over to our camp that night and ran through our entire system. They helped us refill the reservoirs again, realign the calipers, and threw out a few ideas on how the system had failed. After many sleepless nights it was nice to have a fresh perspective on everything from those guys!

No Sun!

The next few days were kind of a blur for me, and nothing too exciting happened (which is good for us!!). We had moved up to 11th or 10th place by Neosho and were excited to keep advancing. After Neosho the goal was Sioux Falls, and we made it there without a major incident as well. We were forced to trailer from Brandon to Winnipeg due to some horrible driving conditions and a strict time for completing the stage. We were disappointed to say the least.

Winnipeg to Medicine Hat

Out of Winnipeg, we hadn't seen any good weather for charging and had over 600 miles to drive in the next 2 days. We decided to in order to make it, we had to trailer to the first checkpoint. Down the road to Regina we found great sun and got an almost-full battery pack in a few hours. Leaving Regina, we had 420 miles to complete in about 15 hours. Still having no failures, the team drove as quickly as possible, with 5 minute driver changes aside the road being our only break in the day. The next day we pulled into Medicine Hat with huge grins on our faces, being one of only 6 teams to complete the last two legs of the stage under the power of the sun. We were required to be there before 6:30 pm, and we rolled in at 6:17:08. This last leg had allowed us to advance to our eighth place position!