KES Team Race to Victory in F1 in Schools Regional Final

Earlier this month a Year 9 KES team took part in the South West Regional Final of the F1 in Schools competition, held at the Bristol and Bath Science Park. Much to their delight they won not one but three awards:  Best Verbal Presentation All Classes, Best Engineered Car Entry Class and overall Regional Champions of the Entry Class. 

Spanning age ranges of 9 to 19yrs, F1 in Schools is a global competition which aims to encourage an interest in science, technology, engineering and maths by creating a fun and exciting learning environment for young people to develop an informed view about careers in engineering, Formula 1, science, marketing and technology. Teams can enter an Entry, Development or Professional Class.

The competition requires teams to use CAD/CAM software to collaborate, design, analyse, manufacture, test, and then race miniature compressed air powered cars.  

It is the first time that KES has entered a team in the competition, and following their success, the team hopes to enter the Development Class next year.  In the meantime, as Entry Class Champions they have been invited to the National Final as VIP guests.

Below, the team gives an account of their participation in this year’s competition.

From the Pit - by Jack Watkin

Our F1 team has spent a year or so participating in F1 in Schools. The aim of the competition is to design and build a small car that you race on a 20-metre track on competition day. However, you are not only judged on the racing, but also: research and development, your pit display, a verbal presentation (that we had to present to F1 in Schools adjudicators), and a design portfolio.

We started off the whole process by just doing basic designs on paper and learning how to use Fusion 360 (the software we designed our car on). After a while of orientating ourselves to the rules and regulations, we finally designed the car on Fusion 360. We 3D printed the car from that final design, made some manual adjustments, and began writing our portfolios, verbal presentations, and pit design.

The day itself was very exciting.  It began by setting up the pits, and researching into Development and Professional Classes, to help us understand what we would have to do when we move up a class next year. Our car was scrutineered to check it met technical regulations. After that, it was time to go racing! We faced some technical difficulties in the morning, but we managed to sort them out as best we could, and still got some pretty good times. All that was left of the actual competition was our portfolio and verbal presentations, and the awards. In the end we not only won Best Verbal Presentation across the whole competition (competing against teams that were in Year 12), but also Best Engineered Car Entry Class and we won the whole thing and left as Regional Champions of the Entry Class! As a prize we received our award trophies and later this term we get to watch the Professional and Development National Finals as VIP’s. So overall a success!

Team Blastet Racing comprised: Jack Boden, Ben Evans, Alex Gentle and Jack Watkin