Solar car racing has a long history with that wonderful cornerstone of American motorsports, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
For Sunryace 93, we had qualifiers there. Although I didn't get to drive the solar car on the fabled raceway, when PrISUm II blew a tire on the track, I got to ride in the back of a pickup truck to go service it - - I wasn't changing the tire, but I made some solar measurements while the tire work was going on.
During this whole time, we stayed at the raceway motel, and we got to use the garages in the pit area. I think we were in Rick Mears' stall. Once while we were there, a famous Indy car driver pulled up and did some practice laps on the track. So awesome.
Doing any sort of racing in Indy is great. We broke some sort of suspension part one time, and we got a replacement the next day, thanks to a surfeit of highly skilled, all-hours machine shops.
Sunrayce 95 also had qualifiers at the track. Sunrayce 97 and 99 did not have anything there, but in the era of "American Solar Challenge" races, some of the off-year race events are at the infield road course at the Speedway.
No comments:
Post a Comment