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Thankfully today was much cooler following yesterdays hot weather and what felt like an equally hot night. Again the team went off to Adelaide International raceway where the main event of the day was the dynamic trials for the car. There was some delay as the organisers waited for the policeman with a speed radar to arrive, but this time was used by most to relax and mix with the other teams, however some of us had work to do.....
The driving team of Andrew Ridings, Tom Toth, Adam Karkowski and Tim Wardrop, as well as reserve driver Eddie Hope were weighed to see how much lead ballast we would have to add to the car to get up to the minimum driver weight of 80 kg.
At last Andrew Ridings took his place in the car for the dynamic trials. This involved driving the car through a set of chicanes to check its stability, then bringing the car to a stop from 50 km/h to check the brakes. Finally the top speed of the car down the main straight is measured by the speed radar to determine the starting order when the race begins tomorrow. Andrew was a little enthusiastic in the braking test. He locked up the front wheels, causing both tyres to blow out simultaneously. This required a quick wheel change before the speed trial.
Later we found out that the policeman had missed the car on the first run, and so the speed on Andrew's second lap of the course, when he was just cruising, was recorded. Because of this we took the car out again, this time recording a speed of 106 km/h - which was measured by drag racing with a petrol powered car. This placed us behind Aurora but ahead of both Spirit of Canberra and Ned.
Our array was tested again this afternoon to correct for a faulty current reading from the previous day. Again we scraped under the limit, while both Aurora and Lake Tuggeranong had to turn off parts of their arrays. While we were waiting, we showed off our cars to some drag racers who had begun to arrive for a large meeting to be held at the raceway that evening. They seemed interested in the very different form of motor sport which is solar car racing.
When we arrived back at the accommodation we finished the final preparations for the start of racing tomorrow. The car was cleaned so that it would look its best, fresh tyres put on and a few minor modifications made. As I type the team is packing the support cars ready to go...
Willy The Whale
Willy!
Mail Bag
If you have a question for the team, or would like to wish them well, write to our mail bag, care of Ask Willy. | | | |
