Back in NZ and watching closely - end of Day 2.

After 8 hours flying I'm back in NZ, and I'm now intently following the teams blogs and official websites.

I've still got more photos from the start of the race to upload, so watch facebook.com/solarfernracing

At the end of Day 2:

Very interesting racing this year, with a very tight top 3 bunch. The next 5 or so cars were well within striking distance if they were playing a more conservative strategy.

The big issue in this year's race is the fires south of Tennant Creek. I gather these extend all the way to Alice and even further south. Not only do these cause a significant loss of power from the smoke haze, but the road south of Tennant creek was actually closed to all traffic, cutting day 2 short for many teams. It seems there is the possibility of damage to the control stop at Barrow creek, and this has now been moved to Ti Tree, about 100km further on. I think Barrow Creek is the crazy small bar with all the money and other cool stuff on the walls - a real shame if that has been damaged!

The top 3 cars made it past Tennant Creek before the road closed, and stopped in Wauchope (said "walk-up"). The next 8 cars were stopped in Tennant Creek before the end of the day. Wauchope is 114km past Tennant Creek, about 12km past the Devils Marbles, and 17km before Wycliffe Well (UFO capital of Australia!). Solar Fern made it to the Devil's marbles at the end of Day 3 in 2007.

The top 3 are: Tokia, Nuon, and Michigan, all keeping together in a tight group.

At Tennant Creek the next 8 are: Aurora, Ashiya Sky Ace 5, Twente, Sunswift, Umicore, Socrat (Istanbull), Okinawa, and Stanford. Official times are on the wsc.org.au website. Of these the first 5 are within 40 minutes of each other, and 2-3 hours behind the top 3 cars, 160-200km behind before road closures.

It is quite possible that the top 3 had low batteries at the time of the road closure, while the others may have been more conservative and still have good batteries. Given the battery situation and the long distance still to come it is quite possible that the top cars may slow down and the next group could speed up and close the gap with little overall energy penalty, in fact, the more conservative strategy may be more efficient. The extra 160-200km represents around 2-3 kwh of battery capacity, so it is well within the battery capacity on the cars. The real race position of the top 8 cars at the time of road closure is still in the battery, not on the road.

However the road closures have really upset the strategy. With the cars stopped for most of the afternoon, and in the morning before their official restart, the cars that have used the most battery power to get out ahead, have gained the most from the full charge during the stoppage. The top 3 are now probably equal in battery with the next 5, so the extra 114km on the road represents a very real advantage. To add to that advantage the 160-200km spacing will be maintained by the officials when the cars at Tennant are started later than the cars at Wauchope. This all fair and correct, but the benefits of the conservative strategy of the cars at Tennant are now all wiped out, and the top cars now have a 2-3kwh advantage, which will be very hard for the next 5 to make up. They can no longer rely on the top 3 running low on batteries.

If the top 3 teams had bet on road closures to recharge their batteries, that has now paid off big time. This has all but decided the top 3 places.

Cars arriving at Tennant today before 2pm will be subject to a 3:52 delay to maintain fair race positions. Cars arriving after 2pm will probably have to wait for the car ahead of them to leave first. The 6 hours until 2pm so this will effect any cars within 6 hours of Tennant creek at the end of day 2, ie any car that got through Dunmara by the end of day 2, which is all the cars that have not yet trailered. These cars could slow down to save batteries and aim to arrive at Tennant Creek at 2pm, so their delay will be minimised as they wait for earlier cars to restart after their 3:52 delay. Many cars will reach full charge during the delay. Of course race officials may reduce the delay for cars arriving nearer 2pm anyway, so slowing down may not be an advantage after all.