News Girls in the Driving Seat for F1 STEM Racing 09.10.2025

Following on from our success in last year’s F1 in Schools competition, last Friday we held our first ever in-house STEM Racing competition. Fourteen teams consisting of 72 students from across Years 10, 11 and the Lower Sixth had the chance to showcase all the hard work they have put in since starting the project back in June, displaying portfolios of their projects as well as racing their 3D-printed model Formula 1 cars along our 20-meter track.

The teams had been tasked with producing a team proposal and project portfolio, outlining their teams’ values, motivations and inspiration. They also evidenced their journey developing their entries for the competition, and the iteration of their computer modelled Formula 1 cars. They then had to face the scrutiny of the judges, justifying their decisions, their processes, and their future plans should they progress to the regional competition.

Just like Formula 1, each team had to line up on the starting grid and face the five red lights as they counted down to the start. The cars are powered by compressed CO2 canisters and, when the lights went out, they were launched down our track. All the cars were very competitive, but VRRRedline powered through to the fastest total race time of the afternoon taking the top spot on the podium with a mere 1.173 seconds! A shoutout also has to go to team VONTEC who achieved the fastest split second reaction time of just 0.164 seconds; and our fastest single track time from Alaris taking the chequered flag in just 0.828 seconds.

The teams all did a brilliant job, each producing excellent and unique designs. Sadly, only 5 of our 14 teams will be able to progress to the regional competition in February, but every team can be very proud of what they have accomplished already.