In NASCAR racing, something I always find a little perplexing is the complaint that today “the cars all look alike” and how “back in the day” the cars were different from each other. Having lived through decades of racing, I’ve gone through a good chunk of the recent technology arms race and remain puzzled that people complain about how homogenized the cars are…. Details and PicturesÂ
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A Solar car called Power Of One (Xof1) claimed a new unofficial world distance record for a solar powered car when it arrived in Los Angeles on March 6th having driven over 12,5000 miles (20,000 km) using only sunshine as fuel.
There is some debate about exactly what constitutes a Solar car world distance record. We wrote about the Solar Taxi setting the Solar car world distance record at 52,000km (32,000 mile) in December. The primary difference between the two is that Xof1 covered the entire distance with power generated by solar cells on the vehicle and has never been plugged into the power grid while the Solar taxi had a solar power plant on a rooftop in Berne, Switzerland with which they fed solar electricity into the grid and used this for overnight battery charging anywhere in the world, much like paying money into a bank account and withdrawing the money from an ATM somewhere else.
The first solar car record was set in 1982 when …Â Details
Started: 18th
Finished: 3rd
Fastest lap: 1m29.020s on lap 39 (13th)
Pitstops: two (O-P-P; lap 11, 12.0s; lap 43, 7.8s)
A fantastic, storming race from Lewis to charge from 18th on the grid to third at the finish. Always on the attack, he profited from the opening-lap melee and an aggressive first stint on low fuel and option tyres to slot into the top 10 by lap five.
He made his first stop on lap 11 (12.0s), where he was long-fuelled and switched to primes. A relentless middle stint saw him surge to fifth: evidence of his push was evident, with several opposite-locking moments clearly visible on successive laps out of Turn Nine.
A second stop (7.8s) on lap 43 and an adjustment to… Details
