Brunel Solar Team: Dutch students taking on the Australian desert in 2025

The 2025 Brunel Solar Team is made up by 18 ambitious students who have taken time out from their studies in engineering, design, physics and similar fields, to dedicate a year to developing and racing their own solar vehicle.

Leading the team is Elias Wawoe; a physics and astronomy student, with an appetite for adventure and passion for teamwork.

"I was looking for a challenge that would push me further than anything which I'd done before," he said. "When I saw images of the Brunel Solar Team's car driving through the Australian outback, I knew that I had to be a part of this."

After a lengthy cycle of design, testing, preparation and strategy, the team is eager to hit the road. 

The track used for the majority of the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge is the Stuart Highway. A 2,720km public road which spans two states and remains accessible to other vehicles throughout competition. In addition to making this one of the world’s longest street races, it also means that teams must conform to the signed speed limit. 130 kilometres per hour in the Northern Territory and 110km/hr in the state of South Australia.
 

“Our ideal, energy-neutral speed is 90km per hour. At times we’ll need to go faster to avoid cloud and similar weather pockets, but we’ll then need to slow down to allow the battery to charge back up.”
 

“Based on our testing and Nuna’s performance, all things going well we should cross the finish line in four and half days.”

Nuna 13, is the current model of an evolving vehicle which has been refined and rebuilt by each new generation of the Brunel Solar Team. The car running this year is the 19th iteration of Nuna. Its history stretches back nearly 25 years, to the 2001 Bridgestone World Solar Challenge, where the original Nuna snatched victory on its debut. Since then, the Brunel Solar Team has won the Australian race a further six times, leaving the 2025 team with big shoes to fill.

The most conspicuous difference between Nuna 13 and previous models, is a fin which extends upward from the driver’s cockpit. An adaptable feature, the fin is designed to harness crosswinds to help propel the car forward, allowing it to conserve its incoming solar and refill its battery charge. But that wasn't all.

On 19 August, the team revealed yet another innovation: the swordfin. This second fin is considerably larger than the canopy fin and is mounted on the solar car when the wind is favourable. However, mounting the swordfin en route can cause the team to lose a lot of time. This requires strategic choices. Every morning and during scheduled stops, the team decides whether to install the fin, depending on the expected wind direction. When the wind is favourable, Nuna 13 extracts more energy from the air currents and the solar car can reach higher speeds. If the wind is unfavourable, the sword fin actually creates extra air resistance.

"It was a challenge to keep the new fin a secret for so long, but we succeeded and we are very proud of it," said Elias. "The name swordfin says it all: it looks like a sword and cuts through the air. We expect that this innovation, under the right conditions, can give us an advantage during the race."

"We challenged ourselves to think beyond previous editions and have had to deal with some notable setbacks along the way, but it’s given us some great opportunities to rally together as a team. That resilience and what it means to do something great together are something from this experience which I'll carry with me forever." 

When it comes time to race, there are far more active roles beyond just the driver. A chase car will trail behind Nuna, measuring its performance, analysing road and weather factors and feeding the driver strategy-based directions throughout. Frequent driver swaps are also needed, given the intense temperature of up to 50 degrees celsius, which builds in a small cockpit surrounded by solar panels and travelling through one of the world’s largest deserts. 

At the end of each day of racing (strictly limited to 8am-5pm) the full team will make camp, review the vehicle and its progress, and switch focus to recharging the people involved. 

"We've been consciously working on what we call, a racing mentality," Elias explains. "That involves developing discipline, having the courage to communicate directly, discussing mistakes, and keeping each other sharp. Our preparation has included a lot of team and trust-building, so that when we’re out there with the stress of a race and the heat of the desert, we can keep ourselves connected as a team."

With 3,000km and a week of desert conditions ahead of them, anything can happen. Good luck Brunel Solar Team!