So now we have come back to Stockholm and here is a summary of what has happend from Spiros point of view. As you already know we arrived at Rotterdam on tuesday and started to work and prepare the vehicle for the technical and safety inspection. We were ready for the technical inspection at approximately 16.30, but because many other cars were in line we were postponed till 08.00 the next morning with position nr.7 in line.
On wednesday 16th of May we were up bright and early to go to the technical and safety inspection. After a few hours we passed the inspection and started with a test run on the track. We discovered that the car wasn’t reacting as fast as we would like. After fixing this problem we unfortunately didn’t have time to make a second try run but waited for the next day.
On the 17/5 we were able to test run for the second time, although this time the coupling between the combustion engine and the electric motor broke so that it needed fixing. This was rather difficult and all the guys on the combustion team worked very hard, including some helping hands. The day after was the first day of the competition and the car was ready to race. Unfortunately the guys in the PIT stop forgot to open the valve for the fuel system. This resulted in Spiros travelling for one lap on the electric motor but did not get the combustion engine running. We didn’t have time to make another attempt.
The last day on Saturday resulted in 3 attempts. The first one went well but the car went too slow, namely it made 16.3km in 42 minutes. We optimized the engine to rich drift to make the engine bear more weight and load the super cap faster. With the second trial the spark in the engine wasn’t good enough so it didn’t charge the super cap fast enough.
Finally we made the last attempt, 10minutes before the deadline when they let cars on the track. The engine was going great for the first 4 laps, but then started to slow down. We made the 10 laps(16.3km) in 39minutes and 58seconds, better than the last run but not enough to get an accepted score.
All team members have learned alot through this experience and had a great time doing so. We are hoping to organize a second roll-out for the rest of the sponsors that were not able to make it at the last roll-out.
