For the third consecutive year, the Alérion prototype has won the SAE Supermileage competition in Marshall, Michigan!
The team first arrived Wednesday June 9thin the afternoon after a long road of 14 hours. Since the vehicle was already assembled for the most part, the team was able to work on last minute preparations in order to be ready for the technical inspections starting the day after.
The first official day of the competition started very early with the registrations and the technical inspections. Overall this stage went really well although the inspectors requested the modification of parts that had been accepted in the previous years. Following the inspection, every other tests were passed successfully with a single attempt, including a new record for the fastest fuel tank replacement! Congratulation also to our 3 members who participated in the verbal design report for which they were awarded a perfect score! At the end of the day, only the rear light needed to be modified in order to meet the competition criteria, which was done during the evening, after what the team focused on setting up the engine for the runs coming up the day after.
Finally, the day everyone was waiting for arrived and we made sure to be on site as soon as the doors opened in order to get our rear light accepted. After getting our vehicle number and a few preparations, we were on the track for our first attempt. Unfortunately, the first run was disastrous and we had to cancel it due to a bad alignment of the front wheels which was slowing down the vehicle. After the problem was corrected, we were ready to try another run but thunderstorms prevented us from going. Fortunately it didn’t last long and the track dried really quickly. We were then attempting our second run but the wheel alignment problem occurred again. The team decided to complete the run anyway, which lead to a disappointing result of 1200 mpg which was enough to put us temporarily at the first place. The team then spent the necessary time to fix the problem for good, and after about an hour, the vehicle was ready for another attempt. After about 3 turns, another problem occurred. The clutch stuck, which made the rear wheel being driven by the engine at all time, causing considerable loss of speed. With the day coming to an end, the team decided to finish the run, which lead to a result of 2340 mpg (995 km/l), which was enough to put the Alérion in first place. The team then hurried to get in line for a last run, about 5 minutes before the end and was able to get in for a last run. Unfortunately, there was not enough time to fix the clutch problem and we had to run with the same problem as the last run. This last attempt gave us a result of 2100 mpg.
Overall, the team is really satisfied with the results of the competition, in spite of all the problems that occurred during the day of the competition. With a few more hours, we would have been able to fix the clutch problem and would have been in a very good position to register an excellent result. We are very excited to come back next year and compete with our prototype at 100%!
Here are the official results.