A memorable race, courtesy of the rays
Monroe man and team design solar-powered car for cross-country event
BY SETH MANDEL
Staff Writer

At left, Michael Kulbacki takes a turn behind the wheel of the car, without the solar array, during a prerace work session. Above, a customs officer inspects the solar car caravan as it heads over the border into Canada during the race.

The summer sun draws throngs of people to the beach, swimming pools, seaside resorts and … to Calgary?

That was the case with Michael Kulbacki who, along with a team of his fellow engineering students, raced a solar-powered car from Austin, Texas, to Calgary, Canada, last month as part of the 2,500-mile American Solar Challenge.

The 10-day race, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, included 20 teams from colleges throughout the country. It began July 17 and ended July 27. The competition is designed to encourage development of alternative energy sources by college students, and the cars are fueled entirely by solar energy.

Kulbacki, who grew up in East Brunswick and now resides in Monroe, one of four drivers from the Auburn (Ala.) University team, said he and his teammates worked for more than 50 hours each week, in addition to their school work, for two years to build the car.

Their schoolwork did not suffer, though, according to Kulbacki.

“We are proud to have the highest cumulative GPA [grade point average] of any engineering organization on campus,” he said, adding that the group has an average GPA of about a 3.85.

The car was built using off-the-shelf components. The brakes, for example, came off go-carts, and the steering system was constructed from bicycle parts.

“This way, not only is it a little bit easier to build the car, but even if something should break, we could more easily obtain replacements, instead of having to machine all the metal and the material ourselves,” Kulbacki said.

Operating on a $150,000 budget, mostly funded by Auburn University, Kulbacki’s team competed in the “stock” class, which was the lower of the two classes in terms of budget and expenses.

Those factors led to the team producing a lightweight, low-profile aerodynamic vehicle.

“We’re basically running 40 miles an hour on the power that it takes to run your average hair dryer at home,” Kulbacki said.

During the school year, the team operates with between 20 and 30 members, 15 of whom accompany the drivers on the actual race.

Four members of the team take turns driving. The 11 nondrivers are divided into a caravan of vehicles that make the trip with the car. One van follows the car and another drives slightly ahead of it.

“Then we also have a trailer that pulls along somewhere, and we also have a vehicle that goes several miles ahead to take a look at road conditions, if there are potholes in one lane, to warn the car to get over,” Kulbacki said.

The teams race for 10 hours each day, though no team member may drive for more than six hours a day.

Kulbacki said all the teams follow the same route, which was presented to them in a 400-page booklet that outlined every turn, even every stoplight the teams would encounter along the route. Kulbacki noted that the route must be followed without any deviation.

“If you leave the race route for any reason, nothing you do beyond that point counts until you go back to that same intersection that you turned off the route at,” he said.

During the last solar challenge two years ago, the second-place team veered off the route and lost 45 minutes of time.

That team lost by 30 minutes.

This year, Kulbacki said, the first- and second-place teams were only 11 minutes apart.

“This year was the most competitive race ever,” Kulbacki said, adding that the race has been run biannually since 1990.

The team eats bagged lunches each day, and the other meals come before or after the day’s racing is complete.

One member of the support crew scouts hotels and restaurants near where the car is projected to finish for the day, by checking the team’s progress about seven or eight hours into the day.

The Auburn team placed fourth in its division and 12th overall. But that did nothing to temper the sense of satisfaction Kulbacki and his teammates felt just by finishing the race.

“The coolest thing that we did is that we totally designed and built a car that ran 2,500 miles,” Kulbacki said, adding that the only equipment mishaps along the way were two flat tires.

Kulbacki graduated from Auburn this past spring with degrees in mechanical engineering and aviation management.

Though he will begin studying for his master’s degree in business this fall, he has another route already planned out — his professional career.

Kulbacki, who has held a pilot’s license since he was 17, plans to become a commercial airline pilot.

Since he expects to do much of his future traveling in the air, Kulbacki took in as much of the scenery as he could during the race, despite its potential for repetition.

“We saw a lot, and a lot, and a lot of corn,” he said.

Kulbacki said the most unforgettable scene from the journey came at the end of the race, when the Auburn team crossed the finish line in Calgary.

“They lit the Olympic flame for us as we were coming across,” Kulbacki said. “And I think the estimate they had was that 14,000 people were lined up on the side of the road.”

And despite driving 2,500 miles in five separate vehicles, the team managed to finish together.

“Before we crossed the finish line, the entire team emptied out of the support vehicle and ran alongside the car across the finish line, and I was driving the car across the finish,” Kulbacki said. “We weren’t expecting that many people and that kind of welcome when we got to Calgary. It was really a pretty amazing experience.”