PUPILS at Robert Mays School in Odiham were crowned the best team in the F1 in Schools regional finals, taking them one step closer to the world finals.

In the Enigma UK team were Katelyn Chelberg, 15, team manager; Cora Morrow, 16, testing engineer; Nathan Bryce, 15, design engineer, Ella Stevenson, 15, enterprise manager, and Sarah Matthews, 15, scrutineer.

The regional finals were held at Stamford Bridge in west London, home of Chelsea Football Club. And the Robert Mays team proved to be the best in London and the South East.

They took home first and second places in the F1 class, first place in the rookie class, best research and development, fastest F1 class car, and best engineered F1 class car.

The challenge to the students is to create, design, construct and race the fastest miniature Formula 1 Car of the future; a 21 centimetre long scale model, powered by a compressed air cylinder.

Each team of between three and six students creates a pit display at the regional final, and demonstrates their work in developing their race car in presentations for the judges. The teams then race their model cars on a specially designed 20-metre track, with the cars covering the distance in just over one second.

Team manager Katelyn said of the team’s success: “We’re very excited to be heading to the nationals. We did a lot of development and testing, including balance, CFD, LERS, track testing and more, which we think helped us win today.

“We’re going to make some improvements for the national finals, including our pit display, sponsorship and the car, which we’ll tear apart and rebuild, definitely making it slimmer.”

If the improvements lead to success in the finals, the team will be jetting off to Austin, Texas, in Schools World Finals in October.

Andrew Denford, founder and chairman of F1 in Schools said: “I am always surprised and delighted to see the enormous amount of work that the students put into this competition and this week’s event was no exception.”