News Review: Australian students win world F1 crown | ADM November 2011

The Minister for Defence Materiel Jason Clare,  has congratulated Australia’s F1 in Schools world champions – the PentaGliders from Brooks High School in Tasmania.

The PentaGliders won their crown in Kuala Lumpur last month, defeating schools from around the world in what has become the biggest science and technology competition in the world.

Three Australian teams were selected to represent Australia in the World Finals this year: the PentaGliders, Trident Racing (Sebastopol College and Raffles Girls School, Singapore) and Trans Tasman Racing (Mirani State High School, Qld, with Auckland Grammar).

Since 2008 the Defence Materiel Organisation has provided funding of $716,000 to Re-Engineering Australia to conduct the F1 in Schools program in this country.

The F1 in Schools program is a great way to get Australian students interested in engineering as a future career path, Clare said.

“Over the next 10 to 15 years, the Australian Defence Force will replace or upgrade about 85 per cent of its equipment and a lot of that work will be done here in Australia,” he added.

“We’ll need engineers to build that equipment and that’s why Defence is supporting this program. It’s working. After completing the F1 in Schools Challenge, 64 per cent of boys and 35 per cent of girls changed their school subjects to Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths subjects.”

The PentaGliders won the Bernie Ecclestone Trophy by scoring maximum points across 11 criteria including car design, pit display and collaboration with industry. They also won the Fastest Car Award for clocking the fastest track time of 1.084 seconds and the Best Engineered Design Award, making it the sixth time in seven world finals that Australia has won this category.

Subject: Defence Industry