It sometimes came out of the sky, but despite that, three Brabant students from the Brunel Solar Team from Delft won the World Championship Sun Racing in Australia on Thursday with that team. In five days they covered 3000 kilometers through the outback in the World Solar Challenge, a biennial competition for solar cars.
“Unbelievable, we just did it”, responds student aerospace technique Jules Teeuwen (21) from Budel. “The last kilometers were nerve -racking: with rain showers, lots of traffic and the competitor in our neck. I am very proud of our team.” Jans van den Nobelen (22) from Klundert finds it a ‘real team performance’. And the 23-year-old Gilles Oude Elberink from Vught mentions the title extra special, because it is an anniversary year for Delft students: “A crown on 25 years of sun racing.”
“The sword fin on the Nuna 13 has proven itself in the wind,” says Jans, Student Industrial Design. The students placed the secret weapon on their car as soon as there was a favorable wind direction. The car had more speed and stability because of the fin. The student team led the race from the beginning and the competitors of Solar Team Twente and KU Leuven just ahead. The win means the eighth world title for TU Delft, but it was a while ago: in 2017 they won for the last time.
Challenges
The three Brabant students worked full -time on the solar car for a year and temporarily pause their studies. “We worked here for a year and did our utmost,” says Jans. “The gap to the competition was very small.”
Along the way they had many challenges. For example, they had to take into account speed limitations, dark clouds and lots of rain. Student Mechanical Engineering Gilles: “We have had very fierce rain showers. The car is performing in sunny weather, so we had to take that into account.” By saving energy in the battery in advance, the team could also continue to ride during rain. “It could sometimes rain all day, and if you can have sun racing, it can be in other parts of the world too.”
Leaky band
The Nuna 13, which was also driven by Jules, drove around 90 kilometers per hour. Sometimes a bit faster and sometimes a bit slower, depending on the weather. On the penultimate day, the students still had a very exciting moment. During a mandatory stop they discovered a flat tire. The team was at the stop three minutes earlier than competitor Leuven and had to replace a tire at lightning speed in order not to lose the lead. It succeeded and it was precisely according to Jules to ‘a huge discharge’. “We were well prepared, everyone knew exactly what to do,” he explains.
Close team
For all three of the fellow students, it was their first participation. They knew each other before they did not take adventure together. “Everyone has their own discipline, such as electrical engineering or mechanical parts, but we worked together to make the car. And from that collaboration we had to become a racing team.” The three have grown very much as engineers, they indicate: “And you don’t experience the piece of teamwork that you experience during the race.”
The students are still in Adelaide for a few days and then go to Melbourne with the whole group for another week. “We have become a close team and I am sure we will continue to see each other,” concludes Jules, Jans and Gilles.