With another thousand kilometers through the Australian outback ahead of them, the TU Delft solar racing team was unable to take the lead in the world championship last night. Haarlem students Kees, Tijn and Basthian remain optimistic. “We still have our eyes on the price,” says Kees Broek.
The first day of the solar car race gave the participants quite a shock the forest fires, which raged very close to the route this year. The Nuna 12 racing car from Delft managed to finish the day second after the team from Belgium. But on the second day of racing she had to give up that place to TU Twente. And they did not manage to overtake the leaders on this third day of racing.
Tactical
Kees Broek is one of the drivers in the 18-member team, which is driving the 3,000 kilometer tour across Australia. Today his steering skills were not used. His team tries to use the qualities of the different drivers as tactically as possible during the week.
“I’m good at keeping focus for a long time, which is difficult in the car because you feel all the bumps and bumps in the road. And with the gusts of wind we’re still getting, that’s quite difficult, so there’s a chance that I’ll be in the next few days.” go drive is there.”
The team at the university in Delft has a reputation to uphold. The Delft solar car won seven out of ten times of the Solar Challenge.
“There are some former world champions from previous teams from our university here in Australia. And we really want to be among those alumni.” But Belgium and Twente are now 76 and 32 kilometers ahead of Nuna 12, respectively.
Open plains
“It was not possible to overtake them today (tonight Dutch time, ed.) because it was very cloudy. We had to drive on the battery for a while. But now our car is in the sun and we are fully filling the battery. ” Kees remains optimistic and assumes that Nuna 12 is the best car for the route to come.
“Tomorrow we have a lot of open plains and therefore a lot of wind. Previous championships, many cars went off the road here.”
Watch a video of the team itself here about their second day, where they were overtaken by the TU Twente team, because the Nuna 12 had to stop at a red traffic light.