Hi everyone, Some of you may know that NovaRace designed and built a rolling chassis/body assembly for an electric powered racecar for the Pikes Peak Hill Climb. We designed and built the chassis for a Texan racer, engineer and fabricator Elias Anderson. Elias had seen our F600 car and thought that the chassis design fit his needs and was right in line with his concept of a small and very light electric powered race car. In the space of a couple of month I designed and built, with Dave Piontek (Piontek Engineering) a redesign of our new F600 chassis but built to the saftey rules of the Pikes Peak Hill Climb (full roll cage etc). I re-designed the back of the car around the electric motor and battery package that was supplied by his motor supplier. The majority of the chassis design is exactly the same as our new F600 but with wider 10" diameter wheels and bigger Hoosier tires. It has the same body, suspension geometry, brakes etc as our new F600.
Elias Anderson received the rolling chassis/body from us a few months ago and in that time he totally assembled and finished the completed race car. This of course included installation of the batteries, motor, controller and wireing as well as all the paint and fab work required to finish the car to a raceable state. A massive task for such a short period of time and this project would be no where without Elias's brilliant concept and hard work.
Now to the exciting news. This little monster, with Elias Anderson at the wheel, works. The car has a high hp electric motor and weighs 880lbs ready to race. This Wednesday Elias Anderson has qualified the new NovaKar for the Pikes Peak Hill Climb 3rd in the electric car class and 6th OVERALL for all cars. Today (Friday) he was only 13 seconds slower than the Toyota Factory Electric Car effort on the top section of the hill. What an accomplishment for Elias Anderson and all who have worked with him.
Elias is excited with the potential of the car and since this was his very first time up the hill he is jumping up and down excited for when he gets more time on the hill.
What a huge thrill for all of us involved with this very cool project. MANY THANKS to Elias Anderson for giving us the opportunity to work with him on this project.
This car is an electric motor powered version of our new F600 car. (See this link for details and pics of the car). http://www.formula500.org/viewtopic.php?t=4196
Here is a link to Pikes Peak for qualifying result: http://www.usacracing.com/ppihc/ts/2012
Stay tuned for pics of our brand new F600 that we will be showing the world very soon.
Here is a picture of the car on the Hill during qualifying.
NovaKar Pikes Peak car on the hill
More later ... Jay Novak