The car should have arrived to Darwin, the starting point of the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge, on the 1st of September. Due to a series of unfortunate incidents, the transport box containing the vehicle is delayed by one week and should be delivered to the team on Friday, the 8th of September, exactly one month before the start of the big race.
Tight planning
‘We tried to minimize the delay, but we couldn’t do anything about it,’ says Gearte Nynke Noteboom, the communication manager of Solar Team Twente. ‘The transport box first got held three days at the airport in Kuala Lumpur and then in Sydney.’
The car is now on its way to the team, but the Twente students will need to work even harder to make it ready for the big race in October. ‘We need time fully prepare the car and now we have seven days less to work on it and rebuild it. Our planning is quite tight. We will have to work more hours and in different shifts,’ clarifies Noteboom.
‘We expect to win’
Despite this unexpected challenge, the team remains positive. ‘In the end, everything will be okay. We will pull through it as a team,’ says Noteboom. ‘We have already travelled the 3000 km long race route to check if everything was as expected. There were no big surprises along the way and we feel even more confident now. We worked so hard to make the best possible car. This year, we expect to win the race and become the world champions.’
World Solar Challenge
In October 2017, Solar Team Twente will once again compete in the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge, a bi-yearly race for cars driving purely on solar energy. The race covers 3000 km of public roads in Australia, leading from Darwin to Adelaide, and the contestants have maximum of six days to complete the whole route.
Solar Team Twente participates in the Challenger class, which contains the fastest solar vehicles of the entire event. The winner of the Challenger class is the team that is the first to cross the finish line. Thanks to the previous successes of Dutch teams, this year’s theme of the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge is ‘Take on the Dutch’. In the 2015 edition of the race, Solar Team Twente finished in the second place.
