A final rundown of how the racing went in Texas. From former team captain Will Jones
Day one of scrutineering:
I was incredibly tense, I had no idea the problems the judges would come up with on our car. I knew that if we couldn’t pass and weren’t able to race it would have been my fault. I started the team, this was my dream, my team, my car. As we’re unloading the car into the garage at the Texas Motor Speedway. I hop in, turn the car on, and there’s a huge spark right by my hip. We have no idea what caused it or why it happened. I go to get our scrutineering assignment and of course the first station we are assigned is electrical. Luckily, while going over the car at the electrical station we experience the spark again and determine the cause of the problem is some faulty heat shrink over a shunt. The judges have a couple of problems with our insulation but they’re all easy fixes.
The next station we are assigned is braking. At some point while taking our car apart and putting it back together during the electrical we accidentally short our supplemental system. We pass everything in the braking station except the brake light test because unbeknownst to us our supplemental system is shorted. We go back and take a look and see a disaster inside our supplemental system box. Wires fused together, bare wires where there’s supposed to be insulation. None of our supplemental systems are working. While we’re waiting to be assigned our next station we somehow manage to fix everything except our horn. The next station we’re assigned is mechanical and we manage to pass everything except a broken horn, on our first try which was a huge accomplishment. Our time runs out on day one and we headed back to the hotel, refuel, fix our insulation problems, and fix our faulty horn.
Day two of scrutineering:
We manage to get everything signed off on electrical and mechanical and electrical in about five minutes, pass the rest of the stations easily, and kill our presentation on how we built our vehicle to the judges. We end the day in the morning at about 11:30 as the third team through scrutineering. That evening, we were incredibly honored to win an award for our telemetry system. We were incredibly proud of next years captain who designed and built the entire system, Eric Andrechek.
Day three of scrutineering:
We’re able to sleep in a little bit, then head over for the all team picture. We make sure the car is ready to race the next day, I walk the team through any problems I could think of that might occur, and we then offered a hand to any teams who weren't through scrutineering yet.
Day one of racing:
We start with a lot of nervous energy. We had no idea if the car would run reliability or how long we could really go before we either ran out of energy or the car would break from a million different problems. We also knew that if anything went wrong, we knew how to fix it. Once we got out onto the track, things kind of clicked, the car was super reliable and much to our surprise we were passing people. The car ran super well the first day. We had no problems and we ended the day two laps out of first place.
That evening we are able to recharge the car and also replace the front tires. To the members of the team who had not experienced that fun process yet it was a great learning experience. We ended the night as last team out of the garage, but ready to race the next day.
Day two of racing:
We started with a lot of excitement, we knew that we were in it to win it and we ran the car pretty hard. We finished the day running 79 laps and winning the day which was super exciting. At the halfway point in the race we were winning by two laps. That night, we were having chain tension issues and ended up replacing both chains which was a total pain in the neck, once again we were on of the last teams to leave the garage.
Day three of racing:
We knew we had run the car a little too hard on Tuesday and then we drove maybe a little too conservatively in the morning. In the afternoon we were ready to go and drove hard. We ended up running 41 laps which ended up being a personal best for most laps run in an afternoon session. We finished the day with 76 laps total but our competitors ended up running 80, this putting us two laps out of first. After spending the past two nights working on the car too late into the night, we decided that the car was fine and didn’t touch it.
Day of four of racing:
We knew that it was going to be a close race. Our team was two laps back of winning a national championship in our first year ever competing. At this point everyone was coming over and trying to get a look at our car and determine why it was so well. Earlier in the week we had won an award for our telemetry system and between that and the fact that our car was doing so well, it seemed like everyone and their brother was trying to check out our car and talk to us. This was super cool because four days ago no one had seemed interested in us at all. The day started and so did the battle for first, the team we were fighting against started two minutes before us in the starting order, we slowly made up ground on them. Eventually pulling ahead, unfortunately we were performing a driver exchange every hour and a half and they were not. During our driver change they managed to erase the gap, we had pushed the car a little too hard and had to slow. We just managed to sneak in 39 laps in the morning but they managed 40, putting them three laps ahead of us. We knew that in the afternoon session we were going to have to push incredibly hard if we wanted to win.
I took off all the limiters on the car and for the first time during the race the car was fully opened up. Until this point, we could only discharge our batteries to 42 volts and pull 42 amps from our batteries. We were able to change this 38 volts and 80 amps. The team decided that I would be the one to drive the last shift which was only two hours instead of three like the past three afternoons. We ran the first hour fast but not super fast, and the team we were fighting against just went lights out. Their car just had a little more than we had. We gave it our best shot and took the batteries all the way down to 38 volts under load which is surely terrible for them. We ended up down by 7 laps finally or a difference of just 2.2% over the course of the competition. We were thrilled!
At the awards banquet we were incredibly honored to bring home the Lockheed Martin Engineering Award for the best engineered car at the whole competition. This was an unexpected and extremely exciting award. I also personally won an award for giving a speech at the closing banquet. Bringing our total number of trophies and awards to five. One telemetry, one day victory, one engineering award, one “order of the solar cell”, and one second place trophy. The team really came together and it was truly a special thing to see. I personally could not be more proud of the way the team or car did. We kicked butt!
A final note:
I wrote this email with a heavy heart. This will be my last team update ever for the OSRC. Next fall, I will be a freshman at the University of Michigan. The past two years have been a roller coaster of success, failure, excitement, disappoint, and lots of long hours. I started the OSRC with a dream and all of you bought into that dream and for that I cannot thank you enough. When I first started I had no idea the time, dedication, or sacrifices that would be required to build a real life solar powered race car, take it all the way down to Texas, pass an extremely difficult tech process, and then actually race and compete against teams from all around the country. I cannot thank everyone enough who bought into this crazy dream and has gotten us here. Looking towards the future, the dream is going to continue to race and hopefully win. We need your help to get there.
Next year the OSRC is going to try their best to win a national championship and we want you to continue to be apart of it. We will have two seniors leaving, myself and Kyle Samluk. There will be a bit of a learning curve but I have no doubt that the OSRC is going to kick butt next year in Texas. The plan is to take a month off then get right back into it, the team already has a long list of improvements they want to make in order to have the car more competitive next year. I have no doubt that we will be able to run significantly more laps next summer. Go chiefs!
Sincerely,
Will Jones and the Okemos Solar Racing Club
Day one of scrutineering:
I was incredibly tense, I had no idea the problems the judges would come up with on our car. I knew that if we couldn’t pass and weren’t able to race it would have been my fault. I started the team, this was my dream, my team, my car. As we’re unloading the car into the garage at the Texas Motor Speedway. I hop in, turn the car on, and there’s a huge spark right by my hip. We have no idea what caused it or why it happened. I go to get our scrutineering assignment and of course the first station we are assigned is electrical. Luckily, while going over the car at the electrical station we experience the spark again and determine the cause of the problem is some faulty heat shrink over a shunt. The judges have a couple of problems with our insulation but they’re all easy fixes.
The next station we are assigned is braking. At some point while taking our car apart and putting it back together during the electrical we accidentally short our supplemental system. We pass everything in the braking station except the brake light test because unbeknownst to us our supplemental system is shorted. We go back and take a look and see a disaster inside our supplemental system box. Wires fused together, bare wires where there’s supposed to be insulation. None of our supplemental systems are working. While we’re waiting to be assigned our next station we somehow manage to fix everything except our horn. The next station we’re assigned is mechanical and we manage to pass everything except a broken horn, on our first try which was a huge accomplishment. Our time runs out on day one and we headed back to the hotel, refuel, fix our insulation problems, and fix our faulty horn.
Day two of scrutineering:
We manage to get everything signed off on electrical and mechanical and electrical in about five minutes, pass the rest of the stations easily, and kill our presentation on how we built our vehicle to the judges. We end the day in the morning at about 11:30 as the third team through scrutineering. That evening, we were incredibly honored to win an award for our telemetry system. We were incredibly proud of next years captain who designed and built the entire system, Eric Andrechek.
Day three of scrutineering:
We’re able to sleep in a little bit, then head over for the all team picture. We make sure the car is ready to race the next day, I walk the team through any problems I could think of that might occur, and we then offered a hand to any teams who weren't through scrutineering yet.
Day one of racing:
We start with a lot of nervous energy. We had no idea if the car would run reliability or how long we could really go before we either ran out of energy or the car would break from a million different problems. We also knew that if anything went wrong, we knew how to fix it. Once we got out onto the track, things kind of clicked, the car was super reliable and much to our surprise we were passing people. The car ran super well the first day. We had no problems and we ended the day two laps out of first place.
That evening we are able to recharge the car and also replace the front tires. To the members of the team who had not experienced that fun process yet it was a great learning experience. We ended the night as last team out of the garage, but ready to race the next day.
Day two of racing:
We started with a lot of excitement, we knew that we were in it to win it and we ran the car pretty hard. We finished the day running 79 laps and winning the day which was super exciting. At the halfway point in the race we were winning by two laps. That night, we were having chain tension issues and ended up replacing both chains which was a total pain in the neck, once again we were on of the last teams to leave the garage.
Day three of racing:
We knew we had run the car a little too hard on Tuesday and then we drove maybe a little too conservatively in the morning. In the afternoon we were ready to go and drove hard. We ended up running 41 laps which ended up being a personal best for most laps run in an afternoon session. We finished the day with 76 laps total but our competitors ended up running 80, this putting us two laps out of first. After spending the past two nights working on the car too late into the night, we decided that the car was fine and didn’t touch it.
Day of four of racing:
We knew that it was going to be a close race. Our team was two laps back of winning a national championship in our first year ever competing. At this point everyone was coming over and trying to get a look at our car and determine why it was so well. Earlier in the week we had won an award for our telemetry system and between that and the fact that our car was doing so well, it seemed like everyone and their brother was trying to check out our car and talk to us. This was super cool because four days ago no one had seemed interested in us at all. The day started and so did the battle for first, the team we were fighting against started two minutes before us in the starting order, we slowly made up ground on them. Eventually pulling ahead, unfortunately we were performing a driver exchange every hour and a half and they were not. During our driver change they managed to erase the gap, we had pushed the car a little too hard and had to slow. We just managed to sneak in 39 laps in the morning but they managed 40, putting them three laps ahead of us. We knew that in the afternoon session we were going to have to push incredibly hard if we wanted to win.
I took off all the limiters on the car and for the first time during the race the car was fully opened up. Until this point, we could only discharge our batteries to 42 volts and pull 42 amps from our batteries. We were able to change this 38 volts and 80 amps. The team decided that I would be the one to drive the last shift which was only two hours instead of three like the past three afternoons. We ran the first hour fast but not super fast, and the team we were fighting against just went lights out. Their car just had a little more than we had. We gave it our best shot and took the batteries all the way down to 38 volts under load which is surely terrible for them. We ended up down by 7 laps finally or a difference of just 2.2% over the course of the competition. We were thrilled!
At the awards banquet we were incredibly honored to bring home the Lockheed Martin Engineering Award for the best engineered car at the whole competition. This was an unexpected and extremely exciting award. I also personally won an award for giving a speech at the closing banquet. Bringing our total number of trophies and awards to five. One telemetry, one day victory, one engineering award, one “order of the solar cell”, and one second place trophy. The team really came together and it was truly a special thing to see. I personally could not be more proud of the way the team or car did. We kicked butt!
A final note:
I wrote this email with a heavy heart. This will be my last team update ever for the OSRC. Next fall, I will be a freshman at the University of Michigan. The past two years have been a roller coaster of success, failure, excitement, disappoint, and lots of long hours. I started the OSRC with a dream and all of you bought into that dream and for that I cannot thank you enough. When I first started I had no idea the time, dedication, or sacrifices that would be required to build a real life solar powered race car, take it all the way down to Texas, pass an extremely difficult tech process, and then actually race and compete against teams from all around the country. I cannot thank everyone enough who bought into this crazy dream and has gotten us here. Looking towards the future, the dream is going to continue to race and hopefully win. We need your help to get there.
Next year the OSRC is going to try their best to win a national championship and we want you to continue to be apart of it. We will have two seniors leaving, myself and Kyle Samluk. There will be a bit of a learning curve but I have no doubt that the OSRC is going to kick butt next year in Texas. The plan is to take a month off then get right back into it, the team already has a long list of improvements they want to make in order to have the car more competitive next year. I have no doubt that we will be able to run significantly more laps next summer. Go chiefs!
Sincerely,
Will Jones and the Okemos Solar Racing Club
