First day progress

Today the World Solar Challenge has started! Weather is sunny, so the fastest teams cruised away at speeds exceeding 100 km/h.

Nuon had a small problem with the solar panel and was overtaken by Michigan.

At first stop the standing was:

1. Tokai

2. Umicore (+30 sec)

3. Michigan (+5 min)

4. Nuon (+18 min)

After the first stop, Umicore crashed and is out of competition. The team is in good health. It was not the first crash of Umicore: yesterday the two front suspensions both broke off at different attempts of the qualification. The team explained that it was caused by braking too vigorously, but obviously a car should be able to withstand such actions and not damage itself just by braking. The cause of the crash of today has not yet been reported. Anyway, the leaders are Tokai, Michigan and Nuon now. More information to come when official results of today is available.


Update: a strong blast of crosswind blew the Umicar off the road after which it hit an object along the road. This severely damaged the car but fortunately the driver is unharmed. According to this report the crash had nothing to do with the problems with the suspension yesterday. Anyway, Umicore is definitively out of competition.




At end of day the top-8 standings are:
1. Tokai
2. Michigan +17min
3. Nuon +1h04min
4. Twente +1h36min
5. MIT
6. Principia
7. Stanford
8. UNSW


For complete standings check http://globalgreenchallenge.com.au/the-event/daily-wsc-results

First control stop, from up to down: Tokai, Umicore, Michigan, Nuon