Saturday 14 July (Omaha time) marked the start of the 9-day American Solar Challenge road race. The maps below (click to zoom) use extrapolation of GPS positions (based on the speeds included in the GPS feed) so that they are probably a bit more realistic than just looking at a snapshot of the live map. The photographs come from various teams.
Initially, there was fog, and a nail-biting contest between Michigan and Western Sydney for the lead. A few teams had problems at the start, and SIUE briefly strayed off the race route:
After two and a half hours, Michigan was in the lead, having driven 164 km. Georgia Tech was still doing repairs. Illini (shown in grey) seemed to have GPS problems, so their position was uncertain. In the Cruiser class, only Appstate was running at the necessary average speed of 33.3 mph or 53.5 km/h (but no doubt this will change):
Scientific Gems 