It would be too easy to say that Michigan won the race as usual. but of the last five American Solar Challenge races you could just as easily say that the score has been Mighty Michigan 3, Missouri S&T 2.
S&T upset Michigan in rainy '99 and shattered the Wolverines' Route 66 record in 2003; Blue won '01 (with then-UMR breathing down its neck), '05 (with Minnesota, MIT, and S&T close behind), and now '08, holding off a heroic charge from S&T progeny Principia.

The Miners ran across the ceremonial finish line in 7th place, joined by S&T Provost Kent Wray, the guy in the white hat (in more ways than one).
The final rankings are: Michigan, Principia, Bochum (Germany), Waterloo, Minnesota, Calgary, and then Missouri S&T. Rounding out the field finds Iowa State, Red River, Arizona, Kentucky, Queen's, Northwestern, Dunham (England), and finally heroic Oregon State with its lovable home-built plywood trailer and $60K day-to-day budget. Oregon State finished ahead of Texas-Austin, MIT, and a long list of other notable institutions that came up short and weren't able to get a car in the race. You can find the actual race times (and plenty of S&T provided photos) at americansolarchallenge.org.

S&T's decision to trailer Monday afternoon, even under sunny skies, worked out to be an excellent strategic decision because they were able to pour just enough energy into their battery pack to keep their grip on 7th place and run ALL of Tuesday's final stage under SMVI's power, even though roughly 40% of the Medicine Hat-to-Calgary route was not very sunny. They must have calculated their power just right because Solar Miner Vi coasted across the finish line on electrical fumes. No power left at all, they tell us.

The '08 Miners has a rough year but still managed to complete the grueling, sometimes sunless race, in the middle of the pack, taking 7th place out of 15 teams to hit the road. Their lack of experience (except for Chris Pieper's race-time leadership and '05 alum Tim Robillard's sacrifice of his vacation time) meant that when things went wrong the students were less likely to understand the myriad of electronic hints that Solar Miner Vi threw at them. When array connections broke the students mistook the lowered output as a result of cloudy weather rather than the broken sub-array connections that were discovered on the last two days of the race, and who knows how long the sub-arrays were compromised. When your array is incomplete you are racing (fighting?) with one arm tied behind your back, and no amount of battery excellence will save you. S&T's decision to manufacture their own circuit boards in-house may also have held back the team as there were hundreds of potentially fault connections that could have been been the reason for their telemetry and turn signals problems. The crew has already started a long list of things to change in the next car, so there has been a tremendous amount of learning that has taken place, and that's what S&T's experiential learning programs are all about.

This was a year that many schools fielded inexperienced teams because of the three-year gap in state-side racing, and at least another dozen schools (some quite well-known) didn't even get their cars completed in time or make it through qualifying trials in Texas. The late announcement that Toyota's sponsorship rescued the event shrunk a two-year build and test cycle to a mere 7 months. S&T's solar superstars barely got the car finished in time and had no where near the hundred (thousands?) of miles on the car necessary to work out all the kinks. During this race nearly every top-grade team, such as Minnesota, Bochum or Principia, had sudden breakdowns that kept the runner-up order in constant turmoil, so even if you've completed your shake-down testing there is still no absolute assurance that you'll sail through at top (legal) speed.

The University of Calgary will host the awards ceremony at noon today, and as soon as all the t-shirts are traded and hamburgers consumed, S&T will hit the road to Great Falls, Montana for the night.
They'll arrive Friday evening in Rolla and clean out all their gear before disappearing until semester's start in three weeks.

The weather for today's return trip? Cloudy! Go figure..........