The key when building a hydrogen RC car isn’t necessarily speed; it’s longevity.

The Morris Community High School Hydrogen Car Club was able to achieve that longevity not once but twice, flying through a national competition on its way to the global H2 Grand Prix in Germany.

There, the club finished second among American schools and 17th among schools across the globe in a competition where Morris was the smallest school involved.

Xander Braun said the car came in a kit, completely in pieces, for them to put together. However, he said the car was basically built for failure.

“We had to go to hobby stores and then places around town in Morris to try and find parts to upgrade it,” Dylan Cleek said. “If you run the stock, it’s gonna fail.”

Braun and Cleek – joined by Jace Scalf, Colin Wickman and Griffyn Cowell – said Thunder Dome in Morris was a great help in not only providing parts but also wisdom. The hydrogen car is a one-tenth-scale model car similar to a hobby RC car, and working at that size can be complicated.

“It’s a six-hour race, and we’re trying to, basically, see who could stay on the track, who can get the most amount of laps in six hours,” Scalf said. “You want speed, but you also want to make sure you make it the six hours.”

The Morris team did make it the whole six hours during its race in Germany, splitting time between all eight members of the team as drivers.

It didn’t make it to the end without some struggles, however. Cowell said even driving a couple of hours alone can be mind-numbing, and it’s important to pay attention to the factors beyond just the car.

“It’s like playing video games for too long,” Braun said. “It’s like your brain kind of goes to mush after a while.”

Scalf said battery management also was an issue, and that was the real problem they ran into near the end of the race in Germany.

“I had to essentially crawl it to the finish line because we had two batteries at the start of the race,” Scalf said. “Our first one died within two hours, so we had to spend the last four hours nursing this last battery. Toward the end, I had to barely throttle it, otherwise it would just die. The steering itself would go out. Like the car would still move, but if I tried to turn it, it just wouldn’t have enough battery to drive and turn.”

The car did reach the finish line despite the adversity.

The Hydrogen Car Club was started by Emmanuel Martinez, a since-graduated member of the team who got the others to join by showing them how much fun working on the car was. It isn’t like a full-sized car, and it’s less chemistry-based than students expect.

Instead, it’s about physics: figuring out the vehicle’s weight distribution, rigidity and fuel usage in a way that gets it to run the longest.

Wickman said the way he joined was a bit different than the others. During his freshman year, prom and the national competition ended up being on the same day, and most of the team wouldn’t be able to go.

“They needed some freshmen to fill in for the seniors, and I had no idea what it was,” Wickman said. “My science teacher asked me if I wanted to join, and I was like, ‘Sure, OK.’ Then it turned out to be awesome.”

Their next goal is to recruit the same way they did with Wickman, although their teacher, Belinda Baxa, is hoping it doesn’t require most of the team missing the competition for prom. They need more freshmen.

“We’re trying to convince some freshmen, but it’s kind of a foreign concept,” Scalf said. “You’d think it’d be a lot of chemistry and all that, and there’s a belief it’s a lot of science. It is, but there’s a stereotype that not a lot of kids like science.”

Scalf said he has tried to tell people he’s not involved in the making of the car. When he’s asked how the car runs, he said he doesn’t know.

“That’s all up to Xander and Emmanuel and John,” he said. “They built the car. Dylan, I think he’s one of the big reasons we made it out of regionals, was because he fixed the car so much there. I tell the younger kids you can just drive. You don’t have to work on the car. It’d be nice if you knew how it worked, but to drive it, that’s what you have to do to be part of this team.”

The students said they were especially thankful to Dan from Thunderdome, at 7085 Highland Drive in Morris, who helped them find out what parts they needed, let them use his track, and provided them with wisdom they wouldn’t have had otherwise.

Jonathan Zarbock and Martinez also are part of the team that competed in Germany.