YOUR VIEWS...IN BRIEF

MORE success for Scarborough UTC, its third competition win within the past month, at the F1 in Schools regional finals at York University. Following the successes regionally and nationally in last year’s F1 in Schools competition, Scarborough UTC entered three very strong teams from its pre 16 cohort: Orbit, Avidity and Poison Ivy.

The regional finals took place on December 11 at the National Stem Centre at the University of York, where the teams competed against some very strong schools from across the region. The competition, organised by Formula 1, takes place all around the world for school children aged 11–18 and sees the students designing and manufacturing a miniature car out of the official F1 model block using computer aided design and computer aided manufacture software and tools. The cars are fired down a drag race circuit by CO2 cartridges and are attached to the track by a nylon wire. Cars are timed and this time is not only affected by the overall design but also by the students’ reaction times as they press the button to start the race once the lights go green.

Teams presented their engineering knowledge and its application to their cars to industry judges, presenting their marketing strategies and ultimately their reactions as the cars raced down the track in excess of 50mph. Scarborough UTC students came away triumphant with the awards for ‘Best Engineered Car’, ‘Team Identity’, ‘Sponsorship and Marketing’.

To add to the awards they also won first and second overall with two of the teams representing Yorkshire and Humberside at the national finals in March at Silverstone race circuit - well done everyone. Ciaran Bartram Scarborough UTC