Saturday morning was finally the day for the students of Solar Team Twente. The team drove the qualification for the World Solar Challenge in sun-drenched Darwin. Driver Bart Mol set a solid 2 minutes and 16 seconds at Hidden Valley Raceway. With that, RED X - the Twente's solar car - secured the eleventh starting position on Sunday. "With the earlier damage in mind we opted for safety today, with over 3,000 kilometres to go you can break the race here, not make it!" says Bart.
The qualifying race is part of what is known as dynamic scrutineering. Other parts in it include a brake test, the slalom and driving an eight. Besides completing the qualifying race positively, RED X also passed the remaining parts. Having already passed the static scrutineering on Wednesday, the students now know that they can appear at the start in Darwin tomorrow morning at 8:05 am.
And so the team does this in 11th place. Specifically, this means that RED X leaves Darwin 5 minutes later than Team Sonnenwagen from Aachen, which gets to start first with a handsome 1.56. The other Dutch teams from Groningen and Delft may start 3rd and 4th.
Catch-up race
Despite Solar Team Twente not being allowed to start at the top, they are confident about their car and a blistering race result. "We know where our qualities lie. We have built a good car this year that is designed for long straights. Now that we have had the sharp corners of the Hidden Valley, we expect a real catch-up race in the coming days", says driver Bart Mol.
In 2017, the team started the race last due to technical problems during qualifying. Back then, the team also managed to recover during the regular race, overtaking nine teams before they even left Darwin, eventually securing a place in the top five. So the race is not yet played and the students from Twente know that all too well.