For the 40-odd members of Northwestern’s Solar Car Team, Sunday should have marked a triumphant precedent.

But a few hours into their first North American Solar Challenge — a 10-day, 2,500-mile race from Austin, Texas to Calgary, Canada — the team’s three-wheeled entry, dubbed nu’Nergy (pronounced “new energy”), suffered a critical malfunction.

The car was heading north at about 2 p.m. Sunday on State Highway 281, outside Adamsville, Texas, when driver Patrick Markan noticed an unusual scent.

“There was a pretty strong smell, but I figured something had probably just rubbed against a tire,” said the McCormick sophomore, noting that a similar incident had occurred earlier in the race.

“When I saw smoke, my first reaction was to get out right away,” Markan said.

The smoke resulted from a short-circuited cell in one of the batteries, a small glitch that caused the car to catch fire, said team president Nikhil Chawla.

“Before the (battery malfunction), the car was driving just beautifully, and we had already passed several other teams,” said Chawla, a McCormick senior. “Unfortunately, that only compounded the situation.”

The nu’Nergy crew put the fire out before authorities arrived, but the battery was still emitting highly toxic polyvinylidene fluoride fumes. While in the car, Markan had inhaled some of the fumes but he wasn’t hurt, said Capt. Joe Adams of the fire department in Lampasas County, Texas.

To avoid any further health risk, the highway was blocked for about an hour while a hazardous materials crew in full-body protective suits removed the leaking battery from the car.

“It created a pretty big disaster,” said Chawla. “But it was completely out of our control, given the circumstances.”

Chawla said he plans to lodge a formal complaint with the Challenge committee, which did not release information that might have alerted crew members to the glitch. The team could have taken steps to prevent the malfunction, but because of their limited battery expertise, they were not aware of a problem, he said.

“The whole thing is just really frustrating,” said Markan. “After so many months of work, to find out that in a few seconds it was finished for our team — it’s not something we expected at all.”

Markan’s grief was amplified by crew members Deepak Ponnavolu and Piotr Lizak, both of whom will graduate before the next Challenge (which takes place every two years).

“I heard that a lot of people called their parents and started crying,” said Lizak, a McCormick senior. “It hasn’t really hit me yet, but I know it will, and it’s going to be hard.”

“Our goals were way higher,” added Ponnavolu, also a McCormick senior.

Teams from 20 universities compete in the Challenge. To qualify for this competition, NU placed fifth out of 30 teams at the three-day Formula Sun Grand Prix in Topeka, Kan. in May — their best finish since the team was founded 1997. Chawla had hoped for a similar outcome in this week’s race, he said in a pre-Challenge interview.

“Given that this has been such a great year,” Chawla said, “I’d expect to finish in a top four, top five, or top six position.”

He also said that this year’s 45-member team was the largest ever, a marked increase from the 13-member crew that failed to qualify for the Challenge in 2003.

“The team has gained a lot of experience, and they really know how to prepare for a race,” Lizak said. “What happened was just a freak accident.”

But Chawla said he refused to dwell on this year’s lackluster finish. After Sunday’s upset, he called the car sponsors to explain the situation in detail and encouraged them to stick with the program.

“We’re disappointed, but we need to be professional,” he said. “We need to move on and make sure we get it right next time.”

The team has already secured $110,000 of their projected $250,000 budget for the 2007 Challenge contender, Chawla said. Coupled with a large returning recruitment class and a strong resolve, Chawla said he is confident that the new project (which he terms “Imagination at Work”) will succeed — with or without his leadership.

“The Challenge was a setback,” Chawla said. “But it won’t set us back forever.”

The Daily’s Scott Gordon contributed to this report.

Reach Dan Macsai at [email protected].