Arkwright Scholarships Awards

 

 

 

The SWIE Educational trust is supporting scholars aiming to study STEM subjects at university. This year we have 4 outstanding scholars, namely Anna Lloyd, William Steer – Rose, Ruth Mangion and Miles Tilling. We wish them luck in their endeavour to achieve personal goals. One of our scholars, Anna Lloyd, took part in a world competition of F1 for schools and her report is as follows:

This October 2016, Anna Lloyd’s team Sixth Degree, competed at their first World Finals, which was held in Austin, Texas. The F1 in Schools event, which coincided with the US Grand Prix, began with the registration of the 39 teams and the building of our pit display which demonstrates the design, technology and manufacturing skills, and sponsorship involved in developing our carbon dioxide powered car. The challenging 4 day competition involved a verbal presentation to a panel of judges along with reaction racing and time trails of the car that teams had designed and manufactured over the summer.

Having competed against hundreds of teams in the North West UK final and then the UK final, we were placed 5^th in the World Finals which the team feels was an outstanding accomplishment. Andrew Denford, the Founder and Chairman of F1 in Schools, described this as “an incredible achievement”. While competing within F1 in Schools, the team, made up of 3 boys and 3 girls aged 16-18 years, have won 8 awards, including the Best Engineered Car in the UK.

An additional highlight of the global competition was the annual Ashes competition that took place between the best Australian car and Sixth Degree, as the best UK car. The UK triumphed despite being challenged by the Australian’s World Record beating car.

Representing the UK at the World Finals provided us with many opportunities including the opportunity to apply to enter the exclusive Randstad Williams Engineering Academy, which aims to train the F1 engineers of the future. Also, due to timing of the event, employees from every F1 team visited the event which gave the teams a great chance to build personal contacts.

All members of the team are keen to pursue a design or engineering career and so these opportunities, as those provided by The Arkwright programme have been crucial to the development of our future careers.

The 2017 season of F1 in Schools has the potential to take Sixth Degree to The World Finals in Singapore.