To thank our sponsors and to promote the FOrmula Zero championship, we decided to be part of a demo race wich was held at Turin, Italy. Located in front of the Eco-Efficiency Biennial ‘09 in the Valentino Park, Turin, we won the sprint race convincingly in a track record time.

These are the sprint race results and the time added is the best time driven during the sprint races.

SPRINT RACE RESULTS GRAND PRIX TURINO

• 0th Solvay Umicore Zero Emission Racing Team, 0 points (24,24 s)
• 1st UnizartecH2, 2 points (25,21 s)
• 2nd Greenchoice Forze, 3 points (25,52 s)
• 3rd Imperial College London, 4 points (32,84 s)

Unfortunatly we did not participate in the main demo race because one of our motors had broken down. We congratulate the Dutch team for winning the main race in Turino. The Spanish and Dutch teams are very evenly matched. We recently located the root cause of the our motor problem and found out that it could easily be fixed.

As the Formula Zero championship comes to an end, the Solvay Umicore Zero Emission Racing Team can proudly call them selves champions. 4 Races were held all over the European continent. All teams had there own home Grand Prix. After a very good start in the British GP things seemed like they could not go wrong for our team. But in The Netherlands we had a small technical diffuculty in the main race which cost us the Dutch GP. The testsessions were always very usefull for us as we could tune our kart to perform optimaly for each circuit. With our heads held high and a kart now in top condition we were destined to win all remaining races. First there was our home GP in Belgium were our main sponsor, Solicore, could proudly watch as we blew past the competition and even set a new trackrecord in Genk. This gave us a very comfortable posiition going in to the last race in Spain. We managed to finish it of in style with another clean win in both the sprint and the main race. At the end of the championship we got 7 out of 8 wins were we only lost 3 points to Spain in The Netherlands. This is the scoreboard at the end of the Championship, where you can clearly see the gap with the other competitors.

As our kart is still in mint condition, we hope to show it off at some events to thank our sponsors and plan to do even some more racing in October...

vici

Official Standings after Spanish GP

SPRINT RACE RESULTS FORMULA ZERO SPANISH GP

• 0th Solvay Umicore Zero Emission Racing Team, 0 points
• 1st UnizartecH2 , 2 points
• 2nd Greenchoice Forze, 3 points
• 3rd Imperial College London, 4 points

MAIN RACE RESULTS FORMULA ZERO SPANISH GP

• 0th Solvay Umicore Zero Emission Racing Team, 0 points
• 1st UnizartecH2, 3 points
• 2nd Greenchoice Forze, 7 points
• 3rd Imperial College London, 5 points

STANDINGS AFTER FINAL ROUND (4 OUT OF 4):

• 0th Solvay Umicore Zero Emission Racing Team, 3 points
• 1st UnizartecH2, 18 points
• 2nd Imperial College London, 37 points
• 3rd Greenchoice Forze, 38 points

This pictures summarizes our feelings after the event. ;-)

Here is the official report: http://www.formulazero.nl/pagina/news/detail/59
Official Standings after Belgian GP

SPRINT RACE RESULTS FORMULA ZERO BELGIAN GP

• 0th Solvay Umicore Zero Emission Racing Team, 0 points
• 1st Greenchoice Forze, 2 points
• 2nd UnizartecH2 , 3 points
• 3rd Imperial College London, 4 points

MAIN RACE RESULTS FORMULA ZERO BELGIAN GP

• 0th Solvay Umicore Zero Emission Racing Team, 0 points
• 1st UnizartecH2, 3 points
• 2nd Imperial College London, 5 points
• 3rd Greenchoice Forze, 7 points

STANDINGS AFTER ROUND 3 OUT OF 4:

• 0th Solvay Umicore Zero Emission Racing Team, 3 points
• 1st UnizartecH2, 13 points
• 2nd  Imperial College London, 26 points
• 3rd Greenchoice Forze, 30 points

Almost one year ago the first race for hydrogen powered took place in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Now we were back in the same country to get some revenge... with a clean winning streak so far in the European Championship it seemed like there was nothing holding us back from a victory in Oss (Netherlands).

click on the image below to open a panorama of the track in Oss:

click here for more pictures of the event

In early practice sessions on saturday 22nd the news got to us that Greenchoice Force was still having problems with there electronics. This was also the reason why they could not start in the main race in Mitchett Place. Because there is a short time in between races the risk that teams who damage their kart have very little time to fix it (transport time between the countries also has to be taken into account). On sunday they sadly announced that their kart would not be running in the Dutch GP.

During the testsessions on Saturday the teams had time to adjust to the longer track (+/- 650m) compared to the 480m in the U.K. The temperatures (27 - 28 degrees Celcius) was the highest we had to race in so far. This also meant that the Fuell Cell, which is cooled with a cooling circuit of deionised water, would not cool so efficiently since all teams use a radiatror.   Imperial Racing Green had no problems with the cooling it seemed but seemed to have mechanical issues. The Spaniards seemed to be the ones with the least of troubles although they are always busy in their pitbox. At the end of the day things were still looking good for us for the sprint race: we managed to fix an issue with our emergency stop and got some nice laptimes.

Recorded testsession times:

• Zero Emission Racing Team: 37.280 s
• UnizartecH2: 39.889 s
• Imperial Racing Green: somewhere in the low 40's

After a nice supper, apparently in the same restaurant as our closest rivals UnizartecH2, and a good night sleep youu could feel the tension in the pitlane in the morning. The normmal raceschedule had to be adjusted so it would fit a race with three competitors and still show the public anough racing action. The qualifying would determine wich kart should drive the semifinal first, the two best semifinnalists would advance to the final and had to race a third time for victory.

The sprint race had every potential of becoming a real thriller with testsession times sometimes only being a few hundreds of a second apart between us and the Spaniards. The British team would have to focus on the main race and hope reliability would leaad them to victory. Last year every kart had difficulties with keeping the fuel system running, but the past week (in the U.K.) all teams were running a very reliable kart it seemed.