Today was the first day of the racing portion of the challenge. Over two years of design and build begin to be put to the test on this day. With scrutineering done and strategy working nonstop to make sure that their calculations are correct for the drivers, all the rest of the team could do is hope that the weather would be on our side and that we don’t run into any issues. Of course, they are practically unavoidable and will happen to every team on the track at some point, but we minimized our chances with testing and thought in our design.
Larsen and Caden reviewed our solar output data from last night. They found that accounting for weather, our required lunch break, and our cars performance, and more, we should start off the race at approximately 40 mph using our cruise control system. However, what they did not account for was traffic in the morning. With 29 teams on the track at once, it makes sense that a couple would have issues at the beginning of the first day. Sure enough, by about a half an hour there were three stopped cars on the side of the track. This forced Zach, who was driving, to slow down, as we are not allowed to pass near the parked car or their trailer as they go to recover it. To maximize our efficiency, we decided to turn down our cruise control to save battery for a more clear time when we could drive more consistently at speed.
The day was stressful, but the team kept calm and ready to face these challenges supporting one another especially when calling out cautions out on the driveway and telling clearly what needs to be done each step of the way. Each individual member of the team was able to perform above and beyond during the 5 different driver changes from the drivers getting out quickly and efficiently, strategy telling to increase the speed as the day goes by and everyone in the pits making sure that both the driver and car were fine.
While strategy was busy, the other members were switching in and out of the pits and the garage, and one of the extra drivers would serve as a spotter for the active driver. To do so, they viewed the track from the condo and reported any upcoming traffic or stopped cars. They also acted as the contact for the driver if they needed to pull into the pits for a fix or tire change.
During our lunch break we decided to tilt the solar array to maximize efficiency. We took our lunch break as late as possible to maximize the advantage of tilting the array over a flat array as it is on the track.
Once the lunch break ended it was back on the track for Zach(12) until just before 5:19 PM where he secured us 204 laps for day one!
Today we were lucky to only encounter quick-to-fix issues such as a loose wheel cover and a sticky horn button. Due to each member’s hardwork and resilience we were able to persevere throughout the day with no major hiccups.
Unfortunately while the solar car challenge has streamed their races in the past, they did not open a live stream today as we expected. Our apologies if this has caused any confusion as we’ve been promoting this non-existent livestream… Luckily, you get to hear from our team directly here on this blog! We will keep you up to date. Feel free to check out the solar car challenge Instagram for photos of all other teams and a few on SOCKEYE (www.instagram.com/the_solar_car_challenge/) and track live results daily (https://www.solarcarchallenge.org/challenge/results-live.shtml).