Usually when parents here about high school students racing cars, they get nervous for their child’s safety. Yet somehow a group of students in Texas convinced their parents to let them take part in a cross country race. It helped that the students were part of a 4-year-old design and building process to make a solar powered car for the race.
A group of students from Greenville High School are a few days into a cross country solar car race where they will travel from Texas Motor Speedway to Palmdale, California. While some of the students aren’t even old enough to drive, their car is already impressing as it broke a high school speed record, hitting 72 miles per hour. According to WFAA, the car is expected to log 930 miles of driving on the trip while competing against more than 20 other teams.
Each team’s car can drive from 9AM to 5PM each day, and the team that has the most miles driven at the end of the week wins. “You have to be focused and straight on the steering wheel because anything could happen because, you know, it’s a solar car that high school students built,” said team captain Anika Escobar. While the team hopes to win, they have set a goal to compete at the World Solar Challenge in Australia in 2025 and it doesn’t seem like anything will stop them.
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