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Years ago, the drivers were officially encouraged to tank up, and reg or associated documentation claimed it was possible to gain some crazy amount of water weight gain (20 kg?). Very odd to have regulators encouraging circumventing of rules but perhaps enforcement was considered to be troubling so they wanted to clue in teams who hadn’t considered that workaround.

Advantage still goes to the team with the smallest driver, I think. The driver compartment and even the car itself could be made smaller, so possible less material, less car volume and car weight. With a smaller driver the ballast can be strategically placed to lower center of gravity of or provide other adjustmets. There is also less driver to deal with in devising safety constraints, padding and such. Having a small driver could be of further advantage in the future if climate control becomes a requirement, since a smaller volume driver capsule or smaller mass driver would require less heating or cooling energy to maintain a given temperature. One possibility for monitoring would be through a ingestible “pill thermometer” that transmits core body temperature wirelessly – check out .

Though the regs call for 80 kg (176 lb) for the driver, I believe the minimal seating is stated to be geared to the 50th percentile adult Japanese, which is not in agreement with that 80 kg. In industry a range from the 5th percentile adult Japanese female through the 95th percentile adult American male is sometimes designed for. Even in the FSAE competition there is accommodation stature requirement for from the 5th percentile female to the 95th percentile male adult North American. Now that’s quite a range, which one fsae source has topping at about 186.7 cm (6′ 1.5″) tall, 102 kg (225 lb) and 97 cm (38.25″) sitting height plus 2″ for helmet height and I presume whatever additional helmet to roll bar clearance (if any) might be required. That’s a tall order, but is where I’d like to see solar racing go as well, using a crash test dummy or reasonable facsimile to test fitment.

I get a kick out of the teams that defy the logic of recruiting wee drivers. Team New England used a monocoque pod design in their 1995 Sunrayce car – very accommodating to larger size drivers yet the car had good performance potential – perhaps 300 miles at 50 mph on lead-acid batteries alone. However the team that really caught my surprise was Oregon State U’s, which competed in the 2008 NASC, and said all 3 drivers were over the 80kg requirement. Either the team was keen on accommodating larger drivers, crafted some nifty lead insoles, or had drivers who could drink like a camel.
-brian

http://friendfeed.com/wsc-2009
http://twitter.com/solarcar
(deze lijkt minder actueel http://twitter.com/wsolarchallenge)

http://twitter.com/Racer_D (Vreemd genoeg maar 5 followers) Nodig om Nuna hot te volgen(We vervoeren de filmcrew langs de Nuna tijdens de race.) Heeft leuke fotos MET begeleidende tekst!!!! Ik denk dat ie onderschat wordt. Alleen vandaag al twintig tweets ook met fotos
http://twitpic.com/mogqw van Michigan (zonder concentrators?)

http://twitter.com/NUsolar NUsolar is a team of 30 undergraduate students at Northwestern University dedicated to designing solar cars for use in education, outreach, and competitio

http://twitter.com/UKSolarCar We are the University of Kentucky Solar Car Team. UK Solar Car Team