Michigan: Update from Hidden Valley

Three major activities make up race qualifications for the world solar challenge: technical scrutineering, dynamic scrutineering, and track qualifications. The first two validate safety and compliance with regulations and the third helps determine the starting order for the 38-vehicle race pack. Whereas each team is assigned a specific time slot over Thursday and Friday for technical scrutineering, all dynamic tests and track qualifiers will take place on Saturday at the Hidden Valley Raceway. Continuum will undergo technical scrutineering tomorrow afternoon at 2:00pm and we’ll begin dynamic scrutineering and track qualifiers at 7:00am on Saturday. These are the very last hurdles that we have to clear before we’re ready to race in WSC 2007.

Above: view of garage spaces and pit lane

Above: the parking lot is packed with vehicles, trailers, and solar cars

Hidden Valley Raceway is filling up quickly as the last handful of teams arrive at their garages. There have been up to 7 vehicles on the track at once working out bugs and whittling down lap times. Thanks to the introduction of new regulations for the 2007 race, we’re seeing an impressive variety of vehicle designs and configurations.

Here's a quick glimpse of what's on the track:

Above: Team Sinag (Philippines) and Helios (France)

Above: Oxyride

Above: Solarworld (Germany)

Above: Solarworld from rear

Above: Umicore (Belgium)

Above: Twente (Netherlands)

Above: Twente's array with Fresnel concentrators

Above: Aurora's new challenge class car (Australia)

Above: Aurora also brought back their 1987/1990 vehicle

Above: Aviva Southern Aurora is racing the 1999 Aurora vehicle (Australia)

We’re fortunate to be part of such a large and competitive race pack for the 20^th anniversary of this amazing race.

Brian