By Sally Pobojewski
News and Information Services
After five and one-half days of battling electrical system problems, 110-degree temperatures, plagues of locusts, and an intestinal virus that sent several students to hospitals and clinics, the
U-M solar car team crossed the World Solar Challenge finish line in Adelaide last Friday at 1:17 p.m.
Maize & Blue finished the 1,864-mile trans-Australian race in 11th place with a total racing time of 49 hours, 7 seconds and an average speed of 38 mph.
Several hundred spectators cheered and opened bottles of champagne as student driver Deanna Winton—exhausted and ill from the gastroenteritis virus that affected 16 students during the last two days of the race—drove the Maize & Blue across the finish line.
“Everyone is disappointed to have to take an 11th-place finish,” said Dan Ross, the U-M team’s publicity manager. “But based on all the obstacles we had to overcome this week, it’s an amazing accomplishment. We’re just glad to be here.”
Crippled by a malfunction in its solar array panel, the U-M car could only generate about 70 percent of its normal power output—not enough to keep up with the leaders in the 52-car race.
“We experienced the best in June when we won Sunrayce 93 and were national champions,” said Ross. “Now we’ve experienced the worst in expecting more from ourselves and not performing as well as we had hoped. But it was an amazing experience, and we wouldn’t have missed it for anything.”
Other than the problem with the Maize & Blue’s solar array, the car performed flawlessly, Ross said. “We had fewer mechanical breakdowns than Honda’s Dream, the first-place winner.”
Team members also were pleased to have finished the race more than nine hours ahead of the 1990 U-M solar car, Sunrunner. Sunrunner’s 1990 World Solar Challenge racing time was 58 hours, 32 minutes for an average speed of 32.4 mph.
Ross said the level of competition in this year’s World Solar Challenge was much greater than in 1990. Fifty-two solar cars from 16 countries competed in this year’s race. All 11 U.S. entries were university teams.
Honda’s Dream, the first-place winner, shattered all previous records by completing the race in 35 hours and 38 minutes with an average speed of 52.5 mph. Powered solely by solar energy, Honda’s Dream reached top speeds of over 69 mph.
The 1990 defending champion team from the Swiss Engineering School of Biel finished in second place in this year’s World Solar Challenge. Son of Sun, a Japanese car from the Kyocera Corporation, finished third. Sky Blue Waseda, from Japan’s Waseda University came in fourth, followed by Ford of Australia’s solar car, Aurora.
Toyota Corporation’s Toyota-56 finished the race in sixth place, followed by Australia’s Desert Rose from Northern Territory University in seventh. California Polytechnic University at Pomona’s Intrepid was the fastest U.S. entry, finishing in eighth place, followed by George Washington University’s Sunforce 1. A Japanese entry, Be-Pal III, finished in 10th place just ahead of the U-M’s Maize & Blue.
