Two days ago Sandstorm completed an uninterrupted run of race distance, at an average of over 9 meters per second, or about 20 miles per hour. Note the sensor dome looking up the hill in the picture on the left. Unfortunately, Sandstorm's brother overshadowed its great performance with disaster.


I started out the day taking pictures and working on logistics around the routes that the vehicles were traveling on. Both vehicles were running consistently and fast, and the prospects for the day looked great.







The above pictures are of H1ghlander and Sandstorm making some slick turns at about 8 meters per second.


I then took over driving the chase vehicle for H1ghlander, and could barely keep up. The technical term that the team chose to describe H1ghlander's driving that day was "bad ass".


Terrain on the course was difficult. The route was packed with tight turns, sharp boulders, steep slopes and drop offs, mountain sides, deep ruts, etc. The Red Team has always emphasized testing in race conditions, and that day was no different.


H1ghlander completed 140 miles and was driving autonomously back to the entrance road so we could drive it back to the shop to pamper it before the race. We came to a part of the trail where there was a swamp on the left and a boulder-ridden mountain side on the right, with a road width a little bit larger than the vehicle. H1ghlander kicked up some thick dust and I slowed down to a stop to let the dust settle before catching up. The team in the chase car watched our vehicle display which monitors its actions while the dust settled. Problems appeared in the display, and one team member immediately hit the emergency pause button, but it was too late. In the second we lost visual, H1ghlander tracked off to the right of the path up the slope, slid on its side and flipped entirely to the other side.




Damage could have been much, much worse given the severity of the accident. Last night, only 24 hours after the crash, H1ghlander was driving as a regular vehicle again. The whole team is pouring resources into supporting recovery, and to perfecting Sandstorm's performance as much as possible. The mechanical team aims to have the whole system up and ready for sensor calibration by tomorrow. That would give us just enough time to calibrate, test driving stability, and head to qualifiers in California.


Check out Red's race log.