Brilliant minds: Pocatello students take first in their category in solar car challenge
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POCATELLO — After months of work constructing their own solar vehicle, a group of Pocatello students took first place in a test of their car’s durability.
Chris Ulland, 18, Logan Friesen, 18, and Krystof Oresky, 17, were the three members of Russet American Racing who attended the 2024 Solar Car Challenge in Fort Worth, Texas, and won first place in the classic division. This was the first year that students from Pocatello participated. They were the only team from Idaho to compete this year, and they were the second team ever to qualify with only three attending members.
“It was just incredible (winning) as a rookie team with three members,” Ulland said.
Initially, the team wasn’t even certain that they would be competitive.
“We kind of went into the competition just hoping to make it onto the track and be able to get some laps,” Friesen said.
The Russets began planning and developing their car at the beginning of the school year, and started building it in the second semester.
“Throughout the year, we always felt like we were behind,” Ulland said. “We weren’t getting things done as quickly as we wanted to. We were running out of time.”
The team tested their vehicle on June 15, which turned out to put them ahead of most of the other teams.
“We talked to some teams, and they were still working on it when we got to the competition. Most of them hadn’t even driven their car before,” Ulland said.
In order to win the race, teams had to focus on completing as many laps as possible over the course of four days of racing. The Russets started the competition with a large lead, completing 93 laps compared to the next closest team at 68 laps.
The team raced from July 14 to July 17, eventually completing 305 laps.
While the Russets weren’t the fastest team on the Texas Motor Speedway, thanks to the work they put in months before the competition, they didn’t have to stop as often as other teams.
“Being able to stay on the track and keep getting laps down, I think that goes a lot further than maybe running a few miles an hour faster,” Friesen said.
Ulland and Friesen have both graduated from Grace Lutheran High School this year and plan to attend college for mechanical engineering, and Oresky has returned to his home in the Czech Republic after his exchange year in Pocatello.
While the three won’t be competing with Russet American Racing next year, the team itself will continue, potentially with other students from Pocatello, Highland and Century High Schools.
Both Uland and and Friesen offered advice to future competitors.
“Test it, and keep it simple,” Ulland advised. “If you can keep it simple and make it work, that’s going to save you so much time. The fact that we knew it was gonna work meant that we didn’t have to fix things down there.”
“It’s important to break things down into a very manageable size,” Friesen said. “It makes it a lot more manageable, and you’re able to keep moving forward. You gotta keep that momentum going to be able to finish the project.”