The Nuon Solar Team from TU Delft has on the first racing day of the World Solar Challenge, the first place caught, followed by the Solar Team Twente. In the cruiser class, Solar Team Eindhoven took the lead to get caught.
The biannual World Solar Challenge has in this edition a races of 3000 km through Australia. The race starts in Darwin and ends in Adelaide. For the Netherlands, battle of three teams: Nuon Solar Team from the Delft university of technology, Solar Team Eindhoven and the Solar Team Twente. The Nuon Solar Team won the World Solar Challenge four times, but saw in 2009 and 2011 the team of the Japanese Tokai university win.
On the first day of the 2013 edition have the Dutch teams have done good business. The Nuna 7-solar car of the Nuon Solar Team managed to get the first place prize after a distance of 640km to have ridden. Solar Team Twente had with his Red Engine at the stop-over in Katherine is still in the lead, but eventually had to settle for second place with a lag of 24 minutes. The Nuon Solar Team would already be in the first stage, have benefited from his ‘secret weapon’, the presence of so-called concentrators. This allows the car extra energy to ‘refuel’ if it stands still.
The Belgian Punch Powertrain had to deal with the necessary setbacks as a result of a flat tire. The team managed to get a distance to bridge of 570km. The Solar Team Eindhoven did fine during the first day of racing in the cruiser class to finish first. Stella, the ‘family car’ of Eindhoven, and remained thus a Us and German team.