We all gathered for our first meeting towards the end of March, we took a look at the project and had absolutely no idea of what we were supposed to be doing.  It was still fun however to stand around talking about ways to make the car lighter, and make it look better, even though we didn’t know what we were doing.

 

Before long we had grasped what we had to do and we were working as a team.  We were coming up with great ideas to improve how aerodynamic the car was and how we could make it light and protect it form crashes.  We started to model cardboard prototypes and see what materials we could use for the actual body shell.

 

With only two weeks to go before race day and still no car, I took the chassis home and made a cardboard prototype.  I decided to make a sports/classic car to create an amazing look and optimum speed. I used a piece of float for the bumper to absorb the impact.  Finally we had something to work with. Back at school on the Monday with less than two weeks to pre race day judging we had to crack on.  We spend all f our third brakes and started coming in at 7:30 in the morning to ensure we had finished.  We used the prototype to measure and cut the aluminum sheets.  We them bolted it to the chassis.  We had a car!!

It was about thirty minutes before the judging that the car was totally finished with all of the electronics done, the stickers on and the PowerPoint made. Just as we finished the other two schools arrived.  When it came to having ours marked the judge was a very strict marker and we didn’t get the marks we hoped. We still had great fun however; we had worked very well together and we had great fun racing and using different machines in the workshop. We spent the final two days practicing racing and checking the cars ran perfectly. Finally we were ready, we had two great cars, the electronics were working. So off we went.

 

 

 

The competition is now over and with a lot of hard work both on the engineering side of things and the marketing work involved, we have come a very long way.

 

On the marketing side of things we managed to raise a total of` £825.00.   This was largely due to the efforts of our first marketing team, Jaspreet Landa and Alastair Bullock.  These year 11 boys carried on working for the team well into the GCSE season.  This is even more impressive when you realise that because of a GCSE Geography exam, neither of them would be able to go to the Silverstone Race Day. 

 

This money proved to be very helpful as we managed to totally re-design and create a better racing car, print shirts for the team and also buy several kit cars that allowed a large number of year 9’s to get some experience of building and testing a car.   As this was our first year in the competition; no one in our team had any experience. This meant that we were have had a steep learning curve, but will be able to draw on far more experience as we go into next year.

 

We raced at Silverstone and managed to secure twelfth  place out of fifty teams that entered. This was not a bad place to be in especially as it was our first year of racing. At our pre-judging day, we managed to secure 45/70 points however since then we managed to get a re-mark and scored 48/70.  On race day we raced very well but there was some very stiff competition.  We feel that this was a very good result considering that this was our first year in the competition.  The competition was a very good experience for all of us and we all had a very good time. We hope that with more knowledge and experience, we can race again next year and hopefully improve our place in the competition.