Slow but steady wins the race

LIME ROCK — There are certain tricks that you need to know when you drive a car with an electric battery, according to Mike Grella. He shared a couple of them while standing next to the skid pad at Lime Rock Park on Friday, May 31, watching handbuilt electric cars whiz quietly around the track.

It was Electrathon day, the annual spring outing for high school students from all across New England, who come to the track to race the cars they’ve spent this school year building and refining. 

This year there were 36 registered teams, although only 30 showed up. The heavy rain this spring had forced the cancellation of the original date of May 17; some teams from far out of town were unable to change their plans and attend. 

Nonetheless, there were still teams from all across Connecticut, New York state and Massachusetts. 

Housatonic Valley Regional High School was one of the competing teams, under the guidance of agricultural education teacher Mark Burdick (who will retire at the end of this school year). 

This is the seventh year that Housatonic has participated, even though it is the closest high school to the race track (which has hosted the Electrathon every year since it started in 2001). 

The drivers for Housatonic this year were Colby Jacquier, Colby Harrington and Naomi Dalmida.The team raced two cars, one of which was new this year. 

Grella has been head of the program since then and he’s seen the cars grow in sophistication over the years. The most progressive team is Nathan Hale Ray from East Haddam, Conn. 

This year’s innovation: their car’s body was a lightweight composite material. Some of the other cars are made of lightweight metal; Housatonic’s car is handsome and relatively new and undamaged and is made of plastic. 

Each electric car is tiny and has to meet a weight requirement that includes the weight of the chassis, the batteries and the driver. 

All the competing drivers have to be high school students with a driver’s license. 

There are three categories of car: Novice, Metal-built (also known as Classic) and Composite. Only Nathan Hale Ray was in the third category.

“No one else can compete with their car,” Grella said. “It’s so light.”

The cars have one hour to travel around the skid pad at Lime Rock. The winner is not the car that goes the fastest but the one that lasts the longest before its battery dies. The newer drivers, Grella observed, come out and try to go around the track as fast as they can.

That’s not a winning strategy. It wastes battery power.

“The secret,” Grella confided, “is not to accelerate when you’re going downhill. And to try and get momentum going before you go up a hill.”

Tesla owners and drivers of other electric cars, take note.