F1 Jaguar Primary School Challenge
Five Year 5 children have been given the opportunity to take part in the international F1 Challenge competition. They must work as a team to create the fastest race car they can in time for: the regional final, and if successful the national final, and if really, really successful the international final! Each member of the team has been allocated a role and are responsible for different parts of the task. This is a valuable life skill for them to experience.
Task: They are designing the body of the car using Computer Aided Design software, creating a portfolio of their design journey, must create a pit display for race day, give a verbal presentation about their design, gain sponsors in order to purchase materials and merchandise, and finally create and build an aerodynamic car!
Please enjoy the photos of the children busy at work.
And…a BIG THANK-YOU to our very kind sponsors!
Photos from the regional final –
A visit from Busseys – one of our sponsors –
Last preparations for the Nationals
Turbo Team were very lucky to have further visits from sponsors and experts to help them with their final preparations before the Nationals. Head Engineer, Neil Bushell, from Future Biogas (one of their sponsors), came into school to listen to the team presentation and to give technical help with using CAD (computer-aided design). Mr Bisset (expert engineer who has previously worked in F1) discussed the teams car design, showed them equipment used in F1 racing and suggested possible improvements to the aerodynamics.
The Nationals
It was a very busy day! They had a very early wake-up in order to arrive at the British Motor Museum, Gaydon, by 8:30 to begin to set up the pit-display and submit the final car designs. Turbo Team had to complete the following activities over the day: racing the cars (the final design was significantly faster than the design for the regionals); engineering talk to explain how they manufactured the car; pit display and portfolio, they had to explain all their work to the two judges; additional challenge – creating a concept car from recycled materials along with a poster advertising it; verbal presentation (with a power point presentation) to three judges; they visited the museum itself; and finally took part in the awards ceremony! While they did not win any of the categories, they were shortlisted to the top three in the Pit Display category, and had a fantastic experience!