Well-oiled team wins solar car race

Miguel Llanos Reporter • Profile • E-mail

MEDICINE HAT, Canada — It’s time to refuel the crew, so the University of Michigan's solar car team turns to one of its sponsors for help: Domino's Pizza.

Team members take coupons to the franchise in this town in western Canada and bring a dozen pizzas back to the grounds of Medicine Hat College, where Michigan's car was first to arrive for the last overnight stop before the finish line in the 2005 North American Solar Car Challenge.

The ability to command resources like free pizza is the envy of competing teams. Unlike its car, which uses no petroleum, the University of Michigan team is one well-oiled machine.

“It’s an empire,” Stanford team leader Eerik Hantsoo says of Michigan, which raced under the slogan "Go fast, go smooth, go blue" and won this year's race. “I’m 100 percent impressed with what they’ve done.”

200-strong team
All of the 18 university teams that competed in the 2,500-mile race had mechanics, electronics experts, strategists and a team leader, but none had Michigan's depth: A 200-strong team back home that includes artists, business majors and the biggest budget — $1.8 million raised from dozens of alumni and companies like General Motors and Domino’s.

Mechanical engineers designed components and worked with companies to build parts for its car, christened Momentum. Business and marketing students raised money with phone calls and even a glossy “sponsorship proposal packet.” Computer scientists wrote programs to analyze the car's performance.

And when July 2005 rolled around, 19 of those Michigan students traveled to Austin, Texas, for the longest solar car race in the world.

INTERACTIVE Under the hood Click for an audiovisual tour of an 80 mph solar racer

These students were the core of the team, including the driver, pit crew and scouts who drove ahead of the solar car and reported back on driving conditions.

Kate Bateman, a mechanical engineering student on the team, says the traveling members worked on the project every day once school was out for summer. “It’s a lot more intense and time consuming than I would have imagined,” she says.

But the rewards, including learning to work as a team and doing some cool engineering, were invaluable.

“To build a car at 20 years old and race it ... that's an opportunity that not many other students have,” says program manager Michael Brackney, a business major entering his senior year.

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