Electrek Formula Sun Grand Prix 2026: Day 2 results and images

This story is about a college solar car race in Brainerd, Minnesota, not about home energy upgrades, so there's nothing here that affects your house or rebate options. Still, here's what happened.

Student teams from around the world are competing in the Formula Sun Grand Prix, a track event where they build and race cars powered entirely by solar panels. After two days of racing, École de technologie supérieure from Quebec led the single-driver class with 234 laps, just ahead of Delft University of Technology from the Netherlands at 221 laps. Delft's car posted the fastest lap of the event, covering 3.1 miles in about 3 minutes 12 seconds, roughly 58 mph, notable because these are student-built cars running purely on sunlight. In the multi-passenger class, only two of nine teams, Georgia Tech and App State, had met the mileage needed to qualify for the follow-up event, a cross-country race called the American Solar Challenge.

To move on to that cross-country race, teams needed to hit set mileage targets on the track or, for multi-passenger cars, meet a scoring formula that weighs speed and passenger miles. A few more teams were expected to qualify by the final day.

None of this involves home solar panels, battery storage, or efficiency rebates. It's a look at how student engineers are pushing solar power technology in a very different context: racing.