Race Day 5 - Thursday

A portion of the team was up into the wee hours of this morning working on the car (which was successfully repaired), and so a 5 am wake up saw some exceptionally tired faces. As we had officially stopped at the Coober Pedy control stop, a portion of the team took the car back there for the morning sunning session while the rest of the team worked on packing up the camp site – goodbye amazing showers!

Back on the road at 8 am saw a (mostly) smooth day’s travelling! Again we passed through two control stops the first at Glendambo (2432 km into the race) and the second at Port Augusta (2719 km into the race). Between the two control stops we had a blowout, which Fiona, the solar car driver at the time, handled very well, safely maneuvering to the side of the road where the team quickly did a wheel change. Back on the road and all was good until the wind picked up and it became a constant battle to keep the car on the straight and narrow.

Once again the 5 pm cutoff was quickly approaching and the team needed somewhere to pull-off and bed down for the night. We ended up pulling over onto the verge of a privately owned race track where the team got to sunning the car while a few members tried to contact the owner. We were graciously allowed to camp within the race track grounds which afforded us a beautiful flat camping spot and toilets – free of charge! Thank you!

With only another 300 km left of the race to go, and other teams camping a mere 20 km down the road, the team was surprisingly relaxed. There was minimal work to be done on the car besides check everything was in good working order and get as much sleep as possible.

Tomorrow we will finish the race in Adelaide, stay tuned! Minke