South African Solar Challenge: start of the race.
South African Solar Challenge
South African Solar Race: Start of the race
This morning (24 September) I was out of the bed early to go and cover the solar race, which started at 08:00 sharp this morning.
When I got there I was surprised to see the number of people who were attending the start of the race. There was a big buzz in the air and all teams were scrambling to do the last minute preparations before the start of the race.
All pictures and video clips in the rest of the post were taken by myself with my phone.
The Japanese team were on pole position, below they are still busy with some final preparations. I saw one of the team members removing as small fly from one of the solar panels., to improve the efficiency of the pannels. These guys are serious to win and pay attention to the smallest details.
Here is the inside of the Lodz solar team from Poland's car. I think they must have one of the more comfortable cars, with a good driving position, the other cars are quite cramped
The picture below gives a bit of an insight of the inside of the car. Note where the driver sits, it does not look comfortable at all, I think I will prefer the VW Beetle or the Lodz car any day.
The solar panels and cockpit up close.
Below are some videos of the cars starting the race. (Is there a better way to post videos, than to first post it on youtube and then pasting the link?) The videos now play in youtube and not directly from my post in steemit,
Video Japanese team starting the race
The VW Beetle is my favorite, but unfortunately I saw it being towed behind a car, on my way home, after the start of the race. I hope it is not the end of the race for them.
I hope to give you some more feedback as the race progress.
Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed it.