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Summary Japanese team Tokai widens its lead in the Veolia World Solar Challenge in North Australia.
Team Tokai, from Japan, increased its lead in the Veolia World Solar challenge on Wednesday (October 19) in the Australian outback. Thirty-seven solar cars are competing in the race, which spans 3,000 kilometres (1,860 miles) between the cities of Darwin and Adelaide.Tokai was first to pass from the Northern Territory into the state of South Australia, as strong winds buffeted the leading cars. Today, so, head of wind becomes strong, so, were careful of the wind, and keep the speed, said Professor of Engineering from Tokai University, Hideki Kimura.Team Nuon, from the Netherlands, is in second place. While it managed to increase its lead over those behind it, it was falling farther behind the leader, Tokai. The gap between Tokai and us did grow a little bit though, and at this stage, theres no way around admitting that their car is really, really good. And, yeah, we are still busy and have something up our sleeves to maybe get a little bit closer, but itll definitely be an exciting race, said Nuon team leader, Pier van Zonneveld.Eighty kilometres (50 miles) behind Nuon is third place holder, University of Michigan. Their car still had to contend with smoke from nearby bushfires. Today went quite well. It was interesting, leading off from yesterday with all the brush fires. We ran into several of those again today, but we hit three control stops, which makes it a very good day. We started the morning hitting Tea Tree, which is a makeshift control stop which they put in place because Barrow Creek was kind of burning down. That was a problem. But we went really well into that stop, and then hit Alice Springs in the early afternoon, and are now here at Kulgera at the end of the day, said Michigan project manager, Rachel Kramer.The lead cars stopped for the night, south of the outback town of Coober Pedy. Farther south again is the city of Port Augusta, and the Tokai team is planning ahead for the urban environment. Were good to go, as the road itself is nice, and so we dont have any problems driving on it, Kimura said.The lead cars are expected to reach the city of Adelaide, the end point of their journey, on Thursday (October 20).
