text: Solar cars locked in close race battle
  A tense three-way battle for second place on day three of the Solar Challenge.
  Australia's Aurora, Momentum from the United States and Sky Ace Tiga from Japan are locked in a tense battle for second place in the World Solar Challenge from Darwin to Adelaide.
  However, all three cars trail the leading Dutch Nuon team by more than 140km going into the third day of the 3,021km race.
  Nuon's Nuna 3 car finished on Monday south of Alice Springs after covering 1,646km.
  That put the flying Dutchmen 148km ahead of its three rivals that were all locked together on 1,497.9kms.
  Race organisers said the leading cars would cross the border into South Australia and were on track to finish in Adelaide on Wednesday afternoon.
  However, they said the challenge lost its first entrant on Monday with Germany's Helio Det car unable to make two timing checkpoints within scheduled deadlines.
  Helio Det owner and driver, Detlef Schmitz has competed in every solar challenge since 1987 but has only crossed the finish line once, in 2003.