St Joseph’s College are on the road to F1 Nationals! Last week some of our Prep and Senior students took part in the F1 in Schools Regional finals, with great success.
Every year Engineering in Motion host an annual international competition. Teams have to raise funds, set up a brand, design a car using CAD software, get it manufactured, and race it.
This year we entered 5 teams at the London West Regionals across the Year 5/6 category and the Year 9/10 category. We also had students from our STEM Leaders mentoring programme who travelled with the teams, having mentored the pupils every week since September.
The Challenge
The challenge was to design and manufacture a model F1 car. (Made of card in Prep and 3D printed in the Senior School – where they also do the CAD design). The aim was to then race it against other schools. Pupils were tasked with preparing a marketing, social media and sponsorship strategy and presenting it at the finals to a panel of judges, detailing their team journey and management of the project. For each of these 3 categories they could earn points, with the aim, to make it to Nationals.
The Result
Our Year 6 team – Speed Diva’s had a fantastic result, winning Fastest Car, Best Engineered Car and Lightning reaction time, crowning them 1st Place in London West, earning them a place at Nationals. Our Year 5/6 team, Shooting Stars, were crowned 2nd place in London West, picking up the title for best Pit Display and again making it to Nationals. Charging Cheetahs (Year 5 team) won the Future Vision award, and our Year 9/10 Team Concorde won the Future Stars Award. St Joseph’s other teams Flaming Phoenix (Year 5/6) were nominated in the Sponsorship and Marketing category and team Swift (Year 9) were nominated for the Judges Choice award and for best Portfolio.
A massive thank you to all our students who took part and to Dr Pellenc and Miss Kubisch for organising. We can’t wait for Speed Divas and Shooting Stars to showcase their cars at Nationals in March.
The Experience
We had some fantastic feedback from all our students who attended. Here’s what they had to say:
Ruhi – Year 6 “My F1 journey was incredible, I learnt how to manage, contact professional businesses and work as a team.”
Eliza – Speed Divas “We are all so happy and so proud of each other.”
Zoe – Speed Divas “I took part in F1 last year and got to National, so this year I wanted to strive for more…we added a new crew member and Speed Divas were formed.”
Ava – Year 6 “Formula One was an amazing experience from planning galore to finally executing. I enjoyed every single moment of it and the outcome was well deserved.”
Ariel – Year 6 “I wanted to do F1 because I wanted to try to collaborate with people more and also to communicate more with others…My team chose Shooting Stars because we can always accomplish our dreams by reaching for the stars.”
