After 3 hard fought days of racing, Day 4 brought with it a key decision to make. With roughly 1200 km of racing left, and first place Tokai gaining ground, we decided to make an aggressive strategy call, by increasing our set speed, to move from 3rd to 1st.

Quantum performed very well for the first half of the day due to having a nice charge in the battery pack from running conservatively earlier in the race.

However, by mid-day, strong crosswinds combined with our high set speed, eventually caused us to have technical difficulties with our windowed fairings. This resulted in significant time on the side of the road to swap in spare fairings, and tweak the system to cope with the conditions.

By the end of the day, the team finished roughly 1.5 hours behind Tokai, and 1 hour behind Nuon at the Glendambo control stop.

We will resume driving tomorrow at 8 AM, with hopes of finishing the remaining roughly 600 km of the race by the evening. While our chances at improving our placement are slim, we are still optimistic, as Tokai and Nuon will be battling to the limit for first place. With significant cloud cover expected tomorrow, this could lead to one of them draining their battery, forcing them to stop and charge on the side of the road.

We will take tomorrow in stride, with hopes of being the first Michigan team to finish in the top 3, two years in a row.

Go Blue!