Today the team was at the Hidden Valley racetrack slightly earlier than usual, at 6.45am this morning, to prepare for the qualifiers. Last night Konny, Anthony and Smithy had to re run a brake line, and bleed the brakes, so we took the car for a quick brake test in the car park, at 7am. We blew a front tyre in the process, but the brakes felt fine.
The rest of the day was spent waiting in our garage to get called up for qualifying. Smithy was sitting in the car ready to drive from about 11am, but due to a minor accident on the track (a wheel fell off), we weren’t called to qualify until almost midday. Smithy drove a beautiful lap, and the car successfully passed the handling and braking tests. Many congratulations to Konny, Anthony and Smithy, our mech team. Our car is registered, and ready to go for the start of the race at 8am tomorrow!
It occurs that very little has been said about our elec team, so: courtesy of Andy, we have eight working trackers (we need six and two have been lent to the New Zealand team who had none working previously), courtesy of Dan we have driver controls, a brake cutout, driver display, rear vision, and spare cables, and courtesy of Simon, we have our strategy code, and our assembled, charged and balanced battery pack and our canopy. And courtesy of our guest Jason, we have a spare CAN cable (the hardest to solder and assemble…)
Ken and Clara are our all rounders, and ken is responsible for a large amount of the soldering, the battery boxes, and various bits of carbon work on the car, and Clara has been doing an excellent job with the canopy, the media, and was responsible for the launch.
Jack and Arthur have been keeping everyone entertained, doing all our last minute shopping, feeding us, taking photos, and generally enjoying themselves.
And that is all for today, we are heading off to pack our cars for the race!
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| A very happy Smithy, after qualifying! |
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| Our race team looking spiffy in our yellow shirts |
