End of Day 1

Posted Sun, 10/25/2009 - 9:09am by Steven Durbin
After one day of racing, the team as traveled 746 kilometers. They are currently located 10 Kilos south of Elliot, 240Kilos from Tennant Creek and 747 Kilos from Alice Springs. Following the Umicore crash, Infinium remains in 2nd place, still about 30-40K behind Tokai and 50Km ahead of Nuon.

Infinium Reaches First Check Point

Posted Sat, 10/24/2009 - 10:08pm by Steven Durbin
The team successfully made it Katherine. They are currently in 3rd place, trailing Tokai and Umicore by 5 minutes. After a roadside pit stop, Nuon is in 4th place trailing by 10 minutes. Weather is sunny so all top teams are hitting speeds between 100KPH and 110KPH.

At the start line

Posted Sat, 10/24/2009 - 5:38pm by Julia Hawley
At 8am it is hot and sunny at the start of the race. The cars are all lined up in qualifying order. Infinium is the 6th car in line and will start at 8:35am with Sudeep at the wheel. The scene is energetic. A band plays in the background as people pass by and look at the many different car designs. The croud is a mix of media, curious Darwin locals, parents, and fans of the teams. The parking lot is full of excited chatter in many different languages. It is hard to believe that it has been two years since Continuum's race in the 2007 World Solar Challenge. The Infinium team members have spent countless hours and made so many sacrifices. All for this day. Thank you to all of our sponsors, parents, friends, fans, and all the Infinium team members in Ann Arbor. It takes a huge amount of support to arrive at the start line. We are looking forward to making you proud. Thank you also to the fans that made the trip all the way to Darwin to follow the team during the race. Your enthusiastic spirit has been with us all week. Singing Hail to the Victors yesterday wouldn't have been Big House worthy without our 24-strong cheering squad! Go Fast. Go Smooth. GO BLUE!

Infinium completes qualifying

Posted Fri, 10/23/2009 - 11:25pm by Steven Hechtman

Infinium has completed its hot-lap with a time of 2:09.95. We were delayed in our running due to a number of on-track incidents before us, including a broken wishbone suffered by Umicore. Umicore has already completed their repairs, and it sounds like there should be no lasting damage. They will be able to complete another hot-lap, but we're not sure whether it will count for starting position. With Umicore and Nuna both repaired, it should be exciting to face these and other top teams at full-strength.

In the challenge class, we believe we will be starting sixth. The teams ahead of us are, as we know it:
Aurora
Nuon
Bochum - BoCruiser
Tokai
Stanford

If Umicore starts based on their next lap time, we expect them to be in the top 3. We are excited that Infinium qualified so well, since our high-efficiency motor and large battery pack are ill-suited for track driving. With a 3000 km race ahead, we should have plenty of time to pass the teams in front of us.

Official starting position will be announced at 3:00 PM Darwin time today (1:30 PM Eastern Time--Darwin is 13.5 hours ahead of US Eastern time).

Scrutineering Passed; Qualifying Updates

Posted Fri, 10/23/2009 - 7:08pm by Steven Hechtman
We are at the Hidden Valley track for qualifying, which is going on as we speak. We successfully passed scrutineering this morning, and are now awaiting our turn to take our hot lap around the track. Some top times (unofficial) from the track so far: Aurora 101: 1:53 Nuna 5: 2:02 Tokai University: 2:07 Stanford: 2:09 OSU (Japan, adventure class): 1:58 FH Bochum's BoCruiser pulled into the pits with a problem--we're not sure whether they will receive another hot lap or not.

Qualifying Preparations

Posted Fri, 10/23/2009 - 9:06am by Steven Hechtman

With our first pass through scrutineering yesterday, and with our second pass and qualifying scheduled for tomorrow, today was quite a busy today. During the morning we worked on preparing our car for the track, so that we could make our last practice laps before the single-lap time trial. We were inconvenienced by one of our telemetry radios failing; however, our back-up radios are a different technology that we have used for many miles of testing, so we don't expect this failure to show up again in the future.

After we got Infinium rolling, we were met by Ford Australia's Global Green Challenge Team. Their eco-cars are starting in their respective class of the Global Green Challenge tomorrow, so they came and visited us at the Hidden Valley Speedway so we could meet each other and see each other's vehicles. Their eco-cars side-by-side with Infinium and our support vehicles was quite a sight!

After our quick meeting, it was back to the track to get in more practice laps! Our driver, Sudeep Rohatgi, has been able to achieve consistently faster laps each day, putting us in a good position relative to our competition. We did lose some time on the track after Infinium suffered a flat tire after going over a patch of grass. However, after getting back into the car, Sudeep was able to achieve a time that would have challenged for pole position in 2007--quite a feat for a car carrying 25 extra kg of batteries compared to the competition.

At the end of the day, we rolled Infinium through the garages and out into the track's parking lot. Once in the parking lot, we set up Infinium's concentrators for an evening charge to further test the system. We received quite a crowd of onlookers--many competing teams were curious about the system, of course. We will be testing the system once again tomorrow for sunrise, then making final bolt-checks before our qualifying run. While Infinium was certainly not designed to be the fastest car around the track, we are very pleased with its track performance so far, and hope that our qualifying result will set us up well for the race.

Scrutineering Update

Posted Thu, 10/22/2009 - 9:05am by Steven Hechtman

Infinium arrived with the semi trailer on Tuesday afternoon, shortly after when race officials publicized time slots for scrutineering. We were scheduled for Thursday (Today) at 2:30 PM, giving us all of Wednesday to make final preparations for the inspection. On Wednesday morning, we swapped out many of our mechanical parts for our race set of parts--each part we design has a given fatigue life, so after over 3,500 miles of testing, many were in need of changing. After swapping out these components, we gave the car a shakedown by running some laps around the Hidden Valley Raceway track. We were impressed by Infinium's speed around the track, and feel that it should qualify much better than Continuum did.

On Wednesday evening, we enjoyed dinner with the group of parents and team supporters led by Chuck Hutchins (Chuck is following the team on his sixteenth race, and we are the ninth team that he has traveled with!). It is great to have such an enthusiastic group of supporters here, and a pleasure to have so many team parents around. After dinner, half of the team returned to the race track to prepare for scrutineering, including the installation of our concentrator system. Up until this point, we had been running without concentrators in Darwin, so no team had seen our new development in person. Many who had heard about the system had yet to see it, so the time for the unveiling of the system was near.

Arrival in Darwin

Posted Mon, 10/19/2009 - 7:28am by Steven Hechtman

The team arrived in Darwin this afternoon, after spending our morning at Litchfield National Park outside of the city. The morning was very enjoyable, as we got to swim in two different waterfalls at the park--quite a relief given the hot temperatures in the Northern Territory!

Only part of our team visited the Hidden Valley Raceway this afternoon, as Infinium and its trailer aren't arriving in Darwin until late tomorrow. In order to familiarize themselves with the race track where qualifying will take place, our track drivers got to walk and drive around the course in the afternoon. Tomorrow we will further acclimate ourselves in Darwin while we await Infinium's arrival. We will also learn the exact time on Thursday or Friday that we must pass through pre-race scrutineering, where our car is inspected to make sure it meets all race regulations. After two years of anticipation, it is quite a feeling to be in Darwin, and we are looking forward to the start of the race on Sunday.

More Travels

Posted Sat, 10/17/2009 - 6:16am by Steven Hechtman

Last night we didn't quite make it to Devil's Marbles, and were forced to stop in Barrow Creek due to a lack of 24-hour gas stations in the outback. Since our scout vehicle was low on diesel and would not be able to go any further without a fill-up, we set up our tent a mile away from Barrow Creek, then woke up early to fill up and make it the rest of the way to Devil's Marbles. Once there, we had a great time climbing the rocks! I should note that we had no injuries worse than a few scrapes and cuts.

Our drive north today took us through Tennant Creek, Dunmarra, and all the way to Katherine--all control stops in the race. On the way up, we ran into some members from the MIT Solar Electric Vehicle Team. It was nice seeing them once again, as we had not crossed paths since their last visit to Detroit over the summer. Tonight we will be camping at Katherine Gorge National Park, and tomorrow we will get a chance to enjoy the park.

Traveling North

Posted Fri, 10/16/2009 - 5:17am by Steven Hechtman
We started the morning at Uluru (Ayers Rock), where we again enjoyed seeing the colors of the rock change as the sun moved through the sky--this time for sunrise rather than for sunset. After this, we hiked around Uluru and Kata Tjuta (The Olgas) as the day grew brighter and hotter. After spending the entire morning at the park, we hit the road, and arrived in Alice Springs for dinner. We are making our way out of the city (yes, there is civilization in the outback!) but are first surveying the route into the Control Stop in Alice Springs. We will spend tonight at the Devil's Marbles rock formation, and are all looking forward to climbing the rocks in the morning.