Bowen’s Formula 1 Superstars

Bowen State High School Year 8 and 9 students travelled to Mackay as part of their F1 Academy Classes, a program which sees them design and race their own miniaturised Formula 1 Race Cars.

The local students have been taking part in the STEM based program over the past year, starting in term 1, and travelled to the F1 in School’s Regional Finals in mid-June.

Teacher Leigh Middleton’s Year 8 class entered a total of eight teams in the Cadet Class, while Mr Kayne Fayolle’s Year 9’s entered six teams in the Development Class.

This is the first time Bowen State High has ever entered the competition.

Mr Fayolle said the program not only gets students working in teams, it also provides them with industry applicable schools, most notably through the use of industry-level programs.

“They use Computer Assisted Design and a CNC Router Machines where anything they’ve designed in the program can be automatically cut, milled or anything like that,” he said.

“In this instance, over the course of Term 1, they were creating cars, collating the data, testing it, and making a better design for competition.”

The F1 competition involves teams designing their own F1 car model with consideration given to Newton’s Laws of Motion, Aerodynamics, weight, friction, and other key principles of physics.

For the grade 9 students, they were also tasked with looking at the business side of F1 – things like team uniforms, business cards, and expenditure.

Mr Fayolle said the students competing in Mackay did exceptionally well.

“It was so pleasant to have so many of our students make it through into state level in Brisbane,” he said.

“We’ll have four teams heading there on October 31 and they’re so pumped about that! The program has already been successful and I think students are getting so much from it.”

Bowen State High School students performed exceptionally at their F1 Academy Classes, which saw them design miniaturised Formula 1 Race Cars

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