A Race to the Top

On Sunday 4 June, St Christopher’s Senior School held its F1 in Schools Grand Final. The competition has been re-structured this year to allow maximum opportunity for students at St Christopher’s to compete in this prestigious engineering competition. Over the last six months, the students have formed teams of four, consisting of a Design Engineer, a Manufacturing Engineer, a Project Manager and a Commercial Manager. The teams were given the challenge to design and make a CO2 powered F1 car from Styrofoam and 3D printed parts and to create two portfolios to illustrate both the Engineering and Enterprise elements of their team’s development. On the evening, all the teams involved provided a two minute verbal presentation relating to their team as well as creating a promotional video for the audience to watch. Furthermore, the students were tasked with building their pit display and completing the pressure challenge, which this year was to design a brand new wheel system for an F1 car, both with a 30 minute time cap. The teams who competed in the Grand Final have had to battle their way through the earlier rounds (Season 1 and 2) in order to take their place in this year’s Final.

The four teams involved in the Grand Final consisted of three teams from Year 9 (Black Arrows, Enigma and The Force) and one team from Year 10 (Team Velocity). The competition was tremendous and it came down to the final knock-out race to decide who the winners would be. On the night, Black Arrows ran out winners by 30 points over team Enigma. Black Arrows were extremely powerful in most areas of the challenge, winning both portfolio challenges as well as the Pit Display and Uniform. However, a few malfunctions with their car left the door open for Enigma to try and catch them on the leader board. Alas, despite winning the final knock-out race, Enigma could not close the gap on Black Arrows. The Black Arrows team have worked brilliantly over the last number of weeks and months and thoroughly deserved their win. Black Arrows consists of Project Manager, Maddie Harrison-Mirfield, Commercial Manager, Colby Altman, Design Engineer, Sahil Sarangi and Manufacturing Engineer, Ben Harrison-Mirfield. Many thanks to all the parents for their support and our wonderful F1 in Schools team for organising the event.