Race Update - 19-Oct-1999

3:30 PM Central Standard Time

Today has been much sunnier, and the race is turning into a proper solar car race. We started the day with Katie Holroyd driving; later drivers today were Tony Vriens and Joe Coventry. High side winds seemed to slow the then leading car (Radiance from Queen's University) much more than they affected us, and within an hour Katie had passed them. We held the lead until about 20 minutes out of Alice Springs, but we are having some difficulty with our array, and its output is down a little. This enabled Queen's to overtake us again, and to arrive in Alice Springs about 8 minutes ahead of us.

The good solar conditions have spread the leaders out, and Queensland's Sunshark is about 25 minutes behind us, with Desert Rose somewhere further back. There are about two hours of racing still to go today, and we believe that if we can get our array problem ironed out, and good sunshine tomorrow, we should take the lead again.

9 pm Update

We are camped tonight still in second place, about 23 km behind Radiance and 2 km ahead of Sunshark. In 4th place is Desert Rose, 5th is Kanezawa of Japan, and 6th is Lake Tuggeranong College. So the Australian teams are still well represented among the leaders. We are 31 km past Erldunda, having done 580 km today.

This was our first day of significant sunshine, and we had very good power from the solar array. But a power loss problem developed two hours before Alice Springs, which lasted the rest of the day. This cost us up to one-third of the array output, and undoubtedly cost us the lead today.

The guys have been working very hard tonight to fix the problem, and it looks like we have got it worked out. We are really glad to be in as good a position as we are, given the magnitude of today's problem. Now all we need is another good sunny day.

We are really pleased about the amount of support and interest there has been on this website - around 500 hits/day, so thanks to you all! We have also had a lot of support from other Australian competitors in the race, who would like to see us do well, so there is a great spirit to the event.

The Whirlpool guys are camping with us tonight. This has been a major day of publicity. We have talked to every major sponsor today, updating them on our position. Also, we have done a TV, a radio, and a press interview, so the word is getting out!