Why?
For what they did to the UM Solar Car Team:
In the first hour of racing today, Continuum has had an accident. Spencer Bailey was the driver of Continuum, and aside from a small scratch on his leg, he is perfectly fine. After the Stanford Solar Car Team passed our Team, they stopped abruptly, causing our lead driver to stop, and Continuum to hit our lead vehicle.
As for the car, the concentrator canopy is cracked in multiple places and will be replaced with our spare. The front of the car will need to be repaired and the front solar modules replaced. There was also delamination seen in some of the front bulkheads. [Continuum Accident. The University of Michigan Solar Car Team Blog. October 20 2007]
From Stanford’s point of view:
Starting out from Darwin was incredibly hectic, They started solarcars every minute, however, the officials didn’t let the rest of the caravan vehicles know when to leave, so we had to fight though all the other teams out of a parking lot, being blocked by 3 or 4 vehicles for the FH Bochum team (large vans filled with lots and lots of Germans) waiting at the exit for their solarcar and blocking traffic. When Ryan pulled out of the starting line with Equinox, he ended up driving a good 10 minutes unprotected by our lead and chase vehicles through the busy streets of darwin. We ended up catching up with our solarcar as it was sitting in an intersection in the middle of traffic. Incidentally, about a minute after we passed through, University of Michigan’s car had some kind of accident and ended up running into lead and effectively putting them out of the race, which is really too bad, as this year’s team is loads and loads more friendly and outgoing than previous years, at least that’s what we hear. (for an event attended by mostly male engineers, there’s a surprising amount of gossiping that goes on at WSC). [WSC Day 1. Stanford Solar Car. October 21 2007]
Further:
I asked about the incident with Michigan and was told that the Stanford convoy never came to a stop and claims no culpability in the collision between their lead vehicle and their solar car. Their race observer agrees. Michigan has started up again and seems to be passing by teams that have even had a day’s head start. We all hope that the race officials grant them a clock reset. [Finally, a call from Australia. Stanford Solar Car Project. October 22 2007]
If you go to Stanford’s blog, seems like they have issues with Michigan. (Stanford friends, I still love you guys!)
Anyway, Michigan finishes 7th because of the accident. Michigan started the race with a clear goal of finishing better than third; Michigan has finished the race third three times but well, seven is better than not finishing at all. As for Stanford, they failed to finish the race. They suffered a terrible accident; the car rolled over! I am glad nobody was hurt.
