Shell Eco-marathon 2017

We are European Champions!

Months of preparation, weeks of construction, days and nights of non-stop work paid off. 18 members of the ThaiGer-H2-Racing team set off to London on Sunday evening or rather Monday noon of the last week of May. Transporting a racing car, a fuel cell, food and much more. With our excellent result of second position from last year we were given the honour of representing Germany at the opening event with our ThaiGer racing car. We also quickly passed all technical checks and received acknowledgement for our first-rate carbon-body-22kg vehicle weight, the lowest figure of all teams this year. Until Sunday noon the team gave it their all on the difficult course in London’s Olympia Park to reach one of the pole positions in the prototype class. It was a careful blend of stress and excitement to say the least. Identifying and solving vehicle’s weaknesses under time pressure was not a problem for the team. Like last year it worked without any test runs because the ThaiGer VI got all the necessary finishing touches on site.

After only a few technical difficulties that were rapidly solved, the whole team gathered at the course hoped that Merit Hantke (program of study Renewable Energies) would drive the car successfully without any accidents or defects over 10 laps, with each lap being 1.7 kilometres. And finally, after 38:45 minutes, the stress was over. Merit Hantke crossed the finish line and the announcement came up on the screen that the hydrogen consumption was less than the leading Turin Team. With the projected distance of 880 kilometres per cubic metre of hydrogen, converted 2581 kilometres with 1 litre of gasoline equivalent, the first position was awarded on the final attempt.

The stress and tension were finally relieved as our hard work had finally paid off.

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