Oct 25, 2007, 4:45 GMT
Sydney - Grey skies over Australia's red centre spangled the multinational field Thursday in the unofficial world championships for solar-powered vehicles.
Nine entries in the biannual World Solar Challenge reached Alice Springs and the half-way point in the 3,000-kilometre race from Darwin at the top of the continent to Adelaide in the south.
'This band of cloud that's come through, and the light rain that's been through the north of Alice Springs today, has certainly changed the equation with a number of teams,' race director Chris Selwood said. 'The nature of the event, for energy-management strategy of this endurance event, the weather does play an important factor.'
The favourite, three-time winner Nuon Solar from the Netherlands, is poised for another victory. But the overcast skies mean the Dutch team is unlikely to break its record of 29 hours and 11 minutes.
Running second was Belgium's Umicore with local entry Aurora in third. When racing began Thursday, Nuon had a lead of at least an hour on Umicore and was more than a day ahead of the backmarkers.
Selwood said that organizers were reluctant to time out any of the 37 vehicles that began the race Sunday in Darwin. Some are being trucked part of the way.
'Rather than send them home, because they're still capable of running, we load them up onto their trailers and send them forward to an open checkpoint,' he said. 'If they miss two consecutive checkpoints, they need to move up to an open checkpoint so that we've got some control over where people are, and we can keep an eye on them and support them and maximize their Solar Challenge experience.'
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