The F1 in Schools Challenge is a secondary school competition which combines science, technology, english, art and mathematics to make students create a model F1 car powered by a carbon dioxide canister. The cars compete against other teams' cars, racing down a 20m track in around 1 second. Teams also create official engineering drawings of their models, as well as create design portfolios showcasing the work they have completed to arrive at the competition venue.
My team achieved a number of awards at the Regional and State level competitions, just falling short of going to the Australian Nationals competition.
Figure 1: Different shots of our model F1 car. The front aerofoil (left) was a particular innovation, along with the rear spoiler (middle / right).
Our main logo utilised a special feature to further push our idea of speed. In the left side of the icon, we used a silhouette of a hare, commonly denoting speed through the 'hare and the tortoise' story. The outside was to mimick the randomness of the gas 'nitrous oxide', again typically used in popular culture as an additive for more speed, and these were combined through the lines that pass between them. The colour scheme paired the prestigiousness of gold as well as the simplicity of black, indicative of our mission.
These colours were used to develop a clear brand scheme that was used in all of our official documents and promotional materials.
Figure 2: Our team's F1 in Schools logo: N2O.
Through this competition, we developed a 3D model of the car that we were to race, using Autodesk Fusion 360. We used other Autodesk softwares to continue to test the model, to ensure that the model did not buckle or break when travelling at its top speeds. This testing meant that we were able to achieve the fastest speed at the regional tournament, just under one second.
Our portfolio required a set of renders, as well as a strict colour scheme to remain in brand for our team. To ensure that we had the funding to participate in the competition, we approached sponsors and partners with a beautiful sponsor document. All documents were developed in Microsoft Publisher and Adobe InDesign.
Figure 2: A collection of renders from our regional and state competitions.
