It's also home to the World Solar Challenge, a 3021km endurance race for solar cars of all shapes and sizes, taking place in a bienniel fashion, pitting competitors against the harsh environment of the Australian bush (and sometimes each other) in a week long marathon from Darwin to Adelaide.
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| The route |
Having worked hard on the car all year, I and the rest of the Cambridge University Eco Racing team were excited to finally get out to Australia to pit ourselves and our car, a tuned up version of the team's 2009 challenger, against the odds. Except, we had to finish building it first, because trying to obtain a degree from Cambridge doesn't really leave a lot of time to be building a car as well.
And so, I arrived in Darwin on the 15th September, stumbling bleary eyed through the tiny airport at 4:30am, to be met by Oli Smith, a fellow team member who'd kindly offered to pick me up. It was a short trip from the airport to the backpacker's hostel where we were staying; Dingo Moon Lodge, which I thoroughly recommend to anyone who is looking for such places.
It was still too early to check in when I arrived, so I lounged by the pool, trying to get it into my head that I was actually in Australia. To be fair, even at the end of my trip, I couldn't get over how familiar some of the places felt to the UK. In fact, to sum Australia up in equation form, it would be simply: AUS = UK + SUN + KANGAROO + ACCENT.
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| Dingo Moon Lodge |
With the car due to arrive a few days after I did, we set about enjoying the sun and the pool, knowing that once the car arrived, we would be fairly busy with finishing it and testing it for the race. A few days passed, which we spent sunbathing, visiting local tourist sites like Litchfield National Park, a Crocodile Farm and an Aviation Museum - it was feeling like a proper holiday, which I think everyone enjoyed. Some time was also taken out to visit hire car companies to sort out support vehicles for the race, as well as to plan out various logistical issues.
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| Termite Mounds |
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| Wangi falls. |
It was on the way back from the Aviation Museum that we had our first mishap. A novice driver plowed into the side of our hire car at an intersection, after failing to give way, thinking she had the right of way to turn.. Although the resulting damage didn't appear so bad at first glance, our hire car sustained enough damage that it had to be taken back to Thrifty to be swapped. It also set us back around 3000 Australian Dollars - the standard excess fee, and although we could be expected to get all of it back as the accident was not our fault, the process would take months and effectively emptied CUER's account for the race - a massive setback, given that we are not a cash flush team to begin with.
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| Our car |
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| Her (dad's) car - ouch |
We then received word from the shipping company, Maersk, that our container had arrived in Darwin and would be available for pickup on Tuesday - this was a little later than our original estimate, but still not a big deal. A few more days passed, and Tuesday rolled around, with no sign of our container being released to us, and then things began to get rather more serious. Thus began an epic struggle on Alisdair, our team manager's, part to wade through a mire of bureaucracy to claim what was rightfully ours. He battled with the dark lord of forms, the evil empress of red tape and the Jabberwocky that was the Maersk finance department in an epic struggle lasting a week and a half that involved frayed tempers, heated words and flying detergent. (A more detailed account is given here)
The rest of us were eager to help, but were also rather powerless to, and so we were left to our own devices, frittering away the time by sunbathing, lounging in the pool, and reading. The frustration levels steadily climbed as we realised the four weeks that we had budgeted for completing the car slowly became three, and then as each day passed I began to see us having to pull increasingly longer shifts and to sleep less and less, and the prospect of that was something not even the brilliant weather could cancel out. Finally, once the container had been released to us, four weeks had become two, and we knew we needed to make every minute count if we were to be able to present a decent race car for scrutineering.
We began to set about the work in a determined fashion, resolving to make the best of what we had. I for one was determined not to come to Australia with a supposedly revised car only to end up doing worse than the team in 2009, who covered 1616 km on solar power. The arrival of several more team members who provided more manpower helped greatly.
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| Hard at work |
After a week of this frenzied activity, we had a car which we felt was ready to test - we knew this would be of paramount importance due to the extreme endurance nature of the race; reliability is a key factor in the World Solar Challenge, and the only way we were going to ensure reliability was to test as much as possible. So, once the electrical and mechanical systems of the car were ready, we took it out to the dedicated test road, not caring that we had not yet finished fitting the new canopy or the fairing covers, or even painted the car. This earned us some funny looks from some of the more established teams that were also out testing as our mottled black and white and bare carbon fibred livery appeared next to their pristine professional paint jobs.
I didn't care though; we weren't out to compete with those top teams, and we were putting kilometres on the car without any major faults, although for that first test the telemetry was not working and there was a minor problem with the steering wheel having too much play. I ended that day with a big smile on my face, looking like I'd cried tears of joy, as due to the lack of a canopy, all the wind in the outback went straight into my eyes as I was driving Endeavour along, leading to tears streaming down my face and the whites of my eyes becoming as red as Twente's car. A minor sacrifice for a good day of solar car testing.
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| Endeavour Mk II |
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| Twente |
We returned to the workshop to put the finishing touches on the car, such as the lights and the canopy, before taking the car out for another test.
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| On the road |
Again, the day went extremely well, apart from a rather scary moment at the end of the last stint, where the handbrake mechanism came loose, meaning the brakes could no longer be applied; cue the car skittering across gravel as the driver screamed in the radio that she'd lost the brakes. Luckily, an escape road allowed Endeavour and driver to escape unharmed (if a little shaken) and the problem was quickly fixed.
We then decided to relocate to Hidden Valley Raceway, from our workshop at BOC Gas and Gear. This was the local racetrack that the organisers had booked for the event, where track testing could be conducted and this was where the dynamic scrutineering was to be done. Over twenty teams had already congregated here, and there was a buzz of engineering in the air, as all the teams raced to sort out their own problems in time for scrutineering and the race. I was pleasantly surprised to find that we appeared to be one of the more "ready" teams, given that there were still some who were still welding a chassis together, others still dealing with major electrical issues (like a battery that kept cutting out), and mechanical issues (such as major wheel vibration).
However, we weren't without our own issues; upon taking the car out on the track with the updated wheels, it became obvious that there was not enough clearance between the wheel rim and the suspension, leading to rubbing during cornering. The problem was alleviated somewhat by an evening spent with an angle grinder, but was never eliminated entirely. Apart from that, we also encountered some weird electrical cut out issues, which was eventually traced to a dodgy isolation switch. The suspension rubbing issue effectively scuppered our hopes of a good grid position, but it would not be a big factor for the race, as the Stuart Highway is basically a straight line. This made me feel good about our prospects, as the car was basically working well, and appeared to be reliable from the 400 kms or so of testing that we had done.
I also felt really good about the atmosphere at the circuit - every team was friendly, and there was genuine interest between teams for each others cars and the different ways in which the other teams had done things, and although the World Solar Challenge is a race, the spirit present wasn't one of competition at all costs; it was one of collaboration and a shared sense of the adventure that everyone would be embarking on. Warm fuzzy feelings yeah!
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| Pit lane at Hidden Valley |
As the car neared completion, there was even time for most of the team to take half a day off to relax and rest themselves before beginning to pack everything in the workshop, ready to go into the support vehicles.
Finally, on the Wednesday before the race, with the car painted, the drivers practised in getting in and out in under 15 seconds (a WSC regulation) and with everything crossed off our to-do list on the car, we were ready for scrutineering the next morning, where the World Solar Challenge officials would check whether our car met the regulations or not and judge our eligibility to enter.
To be continued...
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