[NeilBlanchard]

From Oliver Kuttner on Facebook:

WE DESIGNED TO A VERY NARROW SET OF SPECIFFICATIONS. The production car will trade a few years of improvement for some give in efficiency and will end around the same number after adding some "must have" items. Our first run was a close call. We made the show on the first car by 0.015 seconds ... in the 0-60 run. It... was too close for comfort.

We learned a hard lesson today that almost cost us 5 million dollars. When you make a real leap everything you normally assume to be true may be wrong: We were pleased to see that we were in the first session. Cool air means more power. We kept the engines cool and went to do our thing. Now the requirement was 0-60 in less than 15 seconds.

It sounds slow but when you are in 100 mpg tune there is just no fuel... Uncomfortably I remembered when my last competitor yesterday saw his chances fade away with the 10th run being one of his best missing the target by over 5 seconds... I felt for Kevin [Smith of Illuminati] and was nervous. (the alt cars can take 18 seconds). We had done the run before at shakedown and passed with 14.2 and 14.6 seconds. The upgraded engines were freshly tuned and went from 83.3 MPG to over 100 mpg and they now met full emissions... There was a new part, a catalyst of different size...

I was nervous but thought it would be ok.

The first run was a 18 and the second only slightly better. worse still the second car did no better...There was a strong headwind but I did not think it was enough? What was wrong? We chose to do no more runs because we needed to find a strategy and we only had 10 attempts...

I felt like Kevin [Smith of Illuminati] and saw the 5 million go away, a very sinking feeling in deed. The whole team was solemn. After a while we picked ourselves up and decided to postpone to the second (and final) session with the 0-60 and to concentrate on the rest. We nailed the skidpad. Pirro did it on the 1st try after recon and Brad distinctly owned it on the first try. On try 4 Pirro set the fastest time of any x prize car.

On to the skidpad. This time we decided to do one for the fans and Amy from the film crew mounted a camera. We ran extra laps to help get the footage. The VLC was impressive and the peak G load was 1.46 and we ran an average of 1.18. That is very solid speed for a street tire car... It takes power to go round and around. Brad showed up and also set a 14.x second skidpad (18 is the target). Pirro went off and tried another 0-60 in the parking lot and strangely he did a 14.5. We figured it out. When an engine becomes so efficient it can not bring heat and power. The heat lets you open the cat[alytic converter] and build boost... In the afternoon in hotter weather we nailed the accels in the first try each but it was really close.

Here it was a combination of luck and a good team. It is just another world when you get to running a car on next to nothing.