Our Green Power racing project has entered its second season of racing! They returned to Goodwood, on Sunday the 30th June, where the green power project had its debut race.
Science Technician, William McCanna, has this round up of the day’s events:
Since last year we have; changed the drive gear to a higher ratio which should make us faster, cooling pipes to the motor to help maintain optimum temperature, improved the traction and generally tried to limit weight.
We started off with the one and a half hour practice that had all 100 cars in the session. Apart from some drive chain tension problems at the start leading to some pit time, we did well. Setting a top speed of 22.5 mph and a lap time of 6'24.1 (a new record for us on this track). We came 61st out of 100 in practice completing 6 laps and 14.4 miles.
The main 1 hour race was against 25 of the top teams including the like of Jaguar Land Rover and BASVIC and other companies, colleges and universities. Again we set a top speed of 22.5 mph but set a new team lap record of 6'18.2. We completed a total of 7 laps and 16.8 miles. We would have got further however if the engine had not over heated in the 50th minute of the race, giving us 20th place.
So faster than but not as much distance covered as last time, due to working the engine harder and not dissipating the heat at a fast enough rate. With better engine cooling we could possibly make 9 laps next year.
Well done Green Power team!