The team arrived in Darwin, Northern Territory Sunday night, glad to have a home to call our own for the week. The next day, everyone was busy preparing Arctan for scrutineering. On Tuesday morning, we woke up at 8:30 am for our static scrutineering session. Static scrutineering involves a range of checks by WSC officials, including electrical, mechanical, battery, and dimensional inspections. SSCP was the first team to pass electrical! We passed nearly every station by the end of the first session. After making a few adjustments, we passed static scrutineering as the third overall team, and second challenger class team.
Thursday the team arrived at Hidden Valley Raceway, the location of pits for vehicle work, track test driving and dynamic scrutineering. The track testing went well, with Arctan showing good stability and lap times. We were fortunate to have Michael Busby from Performance Driving Australia with us to help advise on proper track driving. Michael additionally provided convoy and safe driving instruction to the whole team.
After concluding testing for the day, the team had an opportunity to let down, and we all went go-karting! It was both educational and fun for the solar car drivers as well as the rest of the team. That evening, we attended the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge barbecue. It was great meeting people from other teams all over the world!
Friday morning the team and Arctan were back at Hidden Valley to conclude track testing. In the afternoon, we made final preparations for dynamic scrutineering. All of the team’s parents who would be helping with keeping the team fed and happy during the race itself had arrived by the weekend. Thank you to all of them for their dedication and hard work!
Saturday morning, the team arrived early at the track for dynamic scrutineering. Dynamic scrutineering involves a hot lap, which is used for starting line placement, brake testing, and turning radius testing. Arctan performed well, passing the tests and running a lap time of just over 2:10. The lap time placed us 13th on the starting line, and 11th in the challenger class. That afternoon and evening, the team was busy finalizing convoy packing for the race.
We were up at 4:00 am the next morning, and off at five. Arctan was on public display near the starting line with the 42 other teams competing. Around 8:40am Arctan set off to begin the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge! Check out www.worldsolarchallange.org to see live coverage of race time and position. Stay posted on our blog, Twitter, and Facebook to keep up to date with day-to-day race activities.
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