HPV WONTHAGGI 

Human Powered Vehicles

From March 16 - March 18 MERT (Our schools HPV Team) were in Wonthaggi for a 24 hour race. For anyone that doesn’t know HPV stands for Human Powered Vehicles and it’s basically a lying down bike that we race around a 1.5km track in a relay style for 24 hours (a whole day!). We have a senior team, a year 9 all girls team and two junior teams of year 7 and 8s. It was an awesome weekend that started off with a 2 hour bus trip followed by a couple hours to set up and get our vehicles checked by the race officials to make sure they were super safe (they were).

On Saturday morning we were all excited to race, it was super hot about 30° so in the vehicles it was even hotter. The race started and on the third lap we already had an issue. Our senior team ran their vehicle back to the pits after an issue with the chain and it was all hands on deck to fix it and get them back out. Throughout the rest of the race we didn’t have too many issues other than a couple of people who got a little overheated on Saturday afternoon. Sunday however was a completely different story. By about 9 in the morning with 3 hours left of racing the wind started picking up and blowing around a couple marquees and rain started pouring down. The conditions were horrible and vehicles were crashing nearly every lap whether it was because they couldn’t see out the front of the trike or that when trying to turn corners they just spun out.  After racing for an hour in the rain and wind it was incredibly dangerous so the race officials decided to call the race two hours early.

In the end there were a few damaged vehicles and marquees but other than that it was an awesome weekend and we all had a fantastic  time. As always a coupe massive shout outs to to our army of incredible parents and Mr Benson and Ms Lockyer, without you none of this would have happened. 

Thank you to Tullys, Brumbys and Mount Eliza Gourmet Meats for donating most of our weekend's food.

Amelia Rickard