Almost A Contender

OKAY! So i realised that we never ended up posting this when it happened! But i thought i may as well now. So yeh, this happened almost a year ago!

The eV Challenge race was almost a week ago now and here's how it unfolded.

We knew the bar had been raised when cars like this showed up

We got out to the new track at 8:30 and as we drove past some of our competitions pit stations it hit us that we would be in for some serious competition this year with some other cars looking very professional indeed. The second thing that hit us as we got out of the car was the wind. Boy was it gusty! Even the registration people found it difficult as they hopelessly chased rego papers across the entire carpark. In the end the wind did play a big role in the way the race played out.

Guy and Steve in Pit Lane Before the Race

We then set up our pit area and started to get the car, race ready - tightening and checking all bolts and electrical connections, attaching the skin and air scoop and applying sponsor and race number decals. Our car passed the scrutineers in flying colours and our wiring 
even received a compliment. We met with our sponsor representatives from SKM who also had many nice things to say of our car.

 Originally there was only going to be one race in which all classes competed in. But then the organizers decided to book the track for the whole day allowing for the usual two race format. We were entered in Class C (open category with own batteries) which ran in the second race. This allowed us to watch the first race and see how the new track and windy conditions would effect tactics.


The new 1km track is about double the length of the previous track and allowed for 3 - 4 cars to go side by side which along with run off areas instead of curbs improved the safety of the event immensely. Unfortunately the wind was unfavorable for the track as it gave a headwind down the long main straight - the more aerodynamic cars seemed to reap the benefits from this however.

The eventual race winner

^ THIS is where i got up to when writing it last year!

So what happened in the race?

Well, We decided on our driver 3 stints, Guy would drive first as he was the most cool headed driver out of us and so would not get into a tangle that can often happen in the congested opening laps. I (Oscar) would drive second as the car would now be in its peak performance and as i was the lightest, we felt we could benefit from this. Stephen drove the last stint because, well someone has to.

Stephen brings it home. 

Guys stint went fairly well. He drove steadily and kept up their with the main competitors for most of it. But then we realised something was wrong. Half way through his turn we realised guy hadn't come past the pits in a while and then we noticed on the very far side of the track he was stopped. The chain had fallen off. He got it back on and kept driving. It fell off once more during his stint and we were back at least 2 laps from the leading car. Our hap dash drive train was letting us down... Another problem appeared around this time. We think we may have lost 2nd gear. Either the power of our motor had killed it, or we had not tuned to gearbox well enough and it was misaligned. In second the car made a bad clicking noise and gave no more speed than first gear.

Then i got in. Under team orders to just go almost all out and see if we can take back some laps, i did just that. I didn't drive at full throttle the whole time as I didn't want to ruin the batteries but even at 95% we could see our car was pretty fast. The chain didn't come off once during this stint. Perhaps we thought because I was the lightest and thus put less stress on the chain. We regained about a lap during this stint.

 

 In Stephens stint the chain problem re-appeared... 7 times.... The combination of our slightly shoddy drive train which by the this stage would have developed a bit of slop due to the stress of racing and perhaps Stephens unfamiliarity with the car could have been the reason we had more trouble in this stage. We lost more time on the field even tho it was obvious our car still had the speed to compete. It was frustrating to say the least and we could tell our batteries still had juice after the race.

 

L-R Oscar, Guy and Stephen after the race

So where did we finish?
9th
I wont lie. It was disappointing. Seeing as we had never finished lower than 3rd in a car we had built. Still a top ten finish in a field of 50 with a chain falling off 9 times, is a fair effort.
Our car was almost all we had wished for: innovative, fast, efficient, good looking, BUT, it lacked one majorly important thing every car needs. Reliability and consistency.

We were almost a contender