The BGS Greenpower team ran two Greenpower electric cars against the world’s best again this year. Our carbon fibre monocoque car – Terazord – is eight years old, Redshift is six and both have finished the seasons racing in the top ten from over 1,000 cars.
We qualified for a place at the invitation only final, by gaining a podium position with Terazord at Castle Combe and a promising achievement of 2nd place for Redshift despite having to pit for a tyre change. The Year 11 and two Year 10 students under the supervision of Sixth formers Hayden and Anya really rose to the challenges and worked superbly as a racing team, helped by Tom (L6) and Mathew (Y11) in the pit lane in both races.
The final required the team to stop over near Chichester for an early start to get to the Goodwood circuit for 07.00am to undergo scrutineering. In race one, the cars drove with first sets of batteries the team knew were past their best, but the drivers, which included Harry and Oliver (Y10) and Year 11's Rufus and Wilf managed them by taking wider sweeping lines around the historic track. For 85 minutes out of 90, the older batteries were holding the BGS cars in the top five but really dropped off on the last lap - both cars moved back down the order but remained in top ten. Race two would decided the results for the season and so our cars had their best batteries fitted. Thirty minutes in, having overtaken the winner of the previous race, both cars were into the top three. Another car crashed causing the race to be cut short to 80 minutes, and we remained in 2nd and 3rd, but due the organisers awarded the final positions on the best average of race 1 and 2, which meant we came away with fifth and sixth overall – a result to be proud of in BGS's long history of Greenpower racing success.