Pre-Race: 16 October 2009
A big G'day to everyone who has just joined this blog! Welcome.
I went back to the track today. Still not much happening. Looking back at my photos from 2007 I notice that we did not turn up until the Sunday before the race, so there's still time for the garages to fill up.
The Esteban saga continues. Their car is still held up in customs. Ozzie customs seems to take 3 days to sneeze, then another two days to wipe their nose afterwards, and then it's the weekend! If the car is released on Monday it will have taken 2 months to get here from Canada, over two weeks of that in Ozzie customs! The team has a lot of work still to do and now more than a week less time to do it in. Maybe that is why there are so few cars at the track!
Another team to arrive was Kormilda College, a Darwin high school team, who are now entering their 6th World Solar Challenge. Their car was built by the school, from the same moulds as the Desert Rose which finished 4th in 1999. I will be joining Kormilda college for the race down to Adelaide as their electrical engineer. Their main electrical engineer is unable to travel with them for the full distance. Kormilda College completed the race in 2003 and 2005, and came close in 2007, affected by the storm that hit many teams at then end of the 2007 race.
The OSU team from Japan also unloaded their car today.
Rumors abound about an incident with Nuna5, but details are very sketchy. Nothing that will slow them down I'll bet. They are not at the track, but have been in Darwin since early September so the rumors go!
Helios have dome some interesting tyre testing. The new Michelin 95/80/16 tyre had 4kg/1000kg rolling resistance. The old 65-80/16 slick had 2kg/1000kg, and a Chinese moped tyre has 15kg/1000kg! The new Michelin tyres run on 3" wide rims and have a rolling diameter of 558mm.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Hi Rob,
ReplyDeleteGreat news about getting hooked up with Kormilda as their electrical engingeer. Just remember Red is positive, Black is negative, and you can fake the rest LOL!
Interesting stats on the new tyres, just as well we are going to have a grunty array on the revamped Solar Fern... twice the rolling resistance eeeek! The larger rolling diameter could cause some interesting clearance issues too!
As usual... Nuna are "not really here", but just secretly.... LOL!
The tyre figures are very low, I suspect this is on a smooth surface. The difference may not be so great on a rough road, but who knows.
ReplyDeleteAll the wires are orange. I'll go by the colour of the sparks, lol.
The 95/80/16's are quite a bit bigger, definately would not fit in our spats. The 14" rim solar max tyres are much the same as the slicks, but with more rubber and two grooves. Kormilda can't fit their moped tyres in their spats either, and they are worried about stones flicking off the road in the tread and hitting the driver who sits right beside the wheels.
ReplyDelete