Day 1 - The race begins
October 25th, 10.a.m. Covestro Photon is ready, Lead is ready, Chase is ready, the whole convoy is ready. We made it! Working the entire night with some people not getting a single ounce of sleep we had actually managed to fix most of the damage from the crash. Parts of the structure were rebuild or reinforced and the whole suspension of the front left wheel got replaced and readjusted – all that in just one night!
But we had really done it. We were ready to race just on time and thrilled that the race finally began after all the ups and downs. Unfortunately, because of the crash during the qualifying we had to start the race on the last place. Escorted by police, we left from Stade Adrar at 10:15 a.m. Since there is a small-time gap of three minutes between each solar team starting the race, this was the time the Covestro Photon rolled on a public road for the very first time.
This itself was quite challenging due to the very chaotic traffic in the Moroccan metropole. Luckily, the police blocked all roundabouts so the pressure on the driver eased a little. Not long after though this pressure turned into excitement as we were closing in on Chalmers Solar Team, who we overtook after contacting them via radio. Soon after we left Agadir and were now driving towards the Atlas Mountains. On this lonely road in the endless wastelands of Morocco we overtook Top Dutch Solar Team and were now not far behind the first trio.
Setbacks along the route
The overtaking of teams soon came to an end when we unfortunately experienced some technical difficulties. Our power train gave us a small headache and later the solar array was not working completely as intended either. To fix these issues we had to make multiple stops in the afternoon with some taking longer than 30 minutes. This led to us falling back to the last place at the end of the day and not being able to finish today‘s route.Thus, just before sunset we scouted a spot where we loaded the Covestro Photon into our trailer. We had to do this since we are only allowed to drive it until 19:00 because driving in the dark here in Morocco is simply too dangerous.
After arriving at the camp site, we were welcomed with a delicious dinner consisting of traditional Moroccan food. As for the night, we hope to get some sleep but also fix the last minor issues still remaining after yesterday’s crash. Not being able to finish the planned route was a setback but we are still highly motivated and full of energy. Thus, tomorrow we aim to make a comeback and overtake as many teams as possible.
Greetings from the whole team!