We've landed in Darwin! Just got a hot shower at the hotel, and going to make a brief update before heading out to the track:
Perusing social media, it looks like MIT, WSU, Stanford, NIT, and Ardingly all showed up to Hidden Valley while I was traveling, so 40 out of the 45 teams are on site. The following 5 teams are the ones that we can not confirm have their cars at Hidden Valley or nearby:
4 Antakari: Withdrawn? No news from the team at all, and they are no longer listed on the Bridgestone page. They really haven't been heard from since the earthquake in Chile in the middle of September, and we hope they are all OK.
27 RVCE: Not looking great... The RVCE team actually showed up at Hidden Valley several days ago - abet sans car. Their blog says that their car is stuck in Australian customs, because the Cartet report (customs paperwork) wasn't included with the shipment.
The team claimed in a Facebook post over three days ago that "It's another couple of hours until SoleBlaze will rejoin his family". Last night, the team posted this tweet also claiming that the car will rejoin it's family "soon".
Good luck folks...
24 ITU: Status Uncertain. The team has been dead silent since unveiling the car around the start of September.
31 ITS: The team's official social media links are very quiet, but ScientificGems tweeted a link to a ITS team member's Facebook appearing to show the team receiving their car. No idea what part of Australia they shipped their car to, but hopefully directly to Darwin.
45 Lodz: The team received their car about an hour ago, I believe in Darwin.
That's that, now for a few quick links:
Scientific Gems has made a whole bunch of posts in the last two days; go and check them out.
Yesterday, CUER went from having a dead motor back to a working one, thanks to the Nuon team. CUER has written a short post about it on their blog. Now, sometimes in this blog I may come off as a hyper-competitive bastard who only cares about winning, but stuff like this is what the spirit of solar car racing is really all about. I can't think of a single race I've been to where I haven't seen multiple teams banding together to help another team get their car back on the road, and I've definitely spent sleepless nights myself helping out in other team's pits. Bravo to the Nuon team for stepping up and helping CUER get back on their feet.
Well, time to head out to the track and see what's going on!
Welcome back to Australia!
ReplyDeleteRegarding ITS, SR posted a picture of their car at Hidden Valley, here. It looks like they're working on it.
Hmmf. I thought Stanford was here, but they're not. Lodz is here, however.
ReplyDelete