The Good, The Bad And The Smelly: Qualifying in Quantum!
Quantum is a very good car to have on a race like this. Itās a terrible car to sit in for five and a half hours. The technology does what itās supposed to do, and does it very well. The drivers just have to live with it.
Today was great, then not so greatāthen sucked. My butt feels like crap and Iām tired. It got hotter, and hotterāand my butt hurt more and more. Then my feet started to hurt really bad so I took off my shoes. Then the cabin smelled really bad from taking off my shoes. Mostly my tailbone is what hurts, but also my brain because I havenāt had anything to eat since this morning.
That being said, Iāve always wanted to be a racecar driver. Bryan Mazor, who was a driver alongside Troy in 2011, taught me the bells and whistles. Iāve only ever driven Quantum, but at one point our solar car didnāt even have a steering wheel. We had steering levers. The driver position has changed a lot over the years tooāfrom a seat, to a bed and now somewhere in between, like it is in Quantum.Ā
Arguably Quantum is the fastest car weāve built. If Quantum raced Momentum it would be interesting to see who won. Solar cars are getting faster and faster. It wonāt be surprising if design regulations are put in place to keep this trend from getting more dangerous than it already is.
Ā There were some close called out there because people were driving pretty aggressively. Some cars werenāt honking like they were supposed to and there was some passing on the right. At one point I was passing another car on the left, and kept honking but they kept moving towards me. This was pushing me off the track, so I had to accelerate to avoid getting sideswiped. A couple other cars had some really close calls: wheels off the track and spinouts.
Ā I was really looking forward to driving on the Yas Marina Circuit because it is one of the top five most prestigious tracks in racing, at least in Formula One and Iām a big F1 fan. Getting to race on the same track as my favorite racecar drivers, my racing heroes, is pretty awesome.
One way I prepared for this race was by playing a video game called Formula One 2012 on my computer. It has this track and itās extremely accurate. For the first few laps it really helped me feel comfortable about where I was. Then in last few laps when my vision was blurring and my mind was going crazy, my time with the game helped everything feel a bit more instinctual.
U-M Senior pursuing a Bachelor of science in Economics, graduating in May