Competition Results

Well it's been a long 4 days, but we've made it through!

There was a lot of trouble with getting the engine running properly but we did manage to get in one successful run. We consumed 17.8 ml of fuel and received a score of 1324 miles per gallon. We almost didn't make our second run, but Northern Arizona University offered us their spot in line! The officials had the line closed off because of time, but because of NAU's generousity, we were able to make another attempt. All was looking good until the last lap, when a gust of wind blew our fairing off. We told Tim to keep going, but he couldn't because when the fairing blew off, it also hit the external kill switch. It took us a while to figure out that the kill switch was hit, but once Tim was able to switch it back, he floored it around the rest of the track at wide open throttle. When he came in, we were 8 seconds over the time limit. We ended up using only 0.02 ml more fuel than our first run, so we wonder how much we could have saved if Tim didn't have to floor it around half of the track. The top fairing is pretty beat up from flying around and the bottom fairing cracked earlier in the competition, so this might be the Black Widow's last leg....

Well, it was a great learning experience for our young team. We look forward to coming back the the 2011 Shell Eco marathon. Congratulations to Laval University for another win and an impressive 2488 miles per gallon!