A 20 year-old student from Sydney, who competed in the F1 in Schools program has scored himself a role with World Champion Formula 1 team Red Bull Racing.
Matt Cruickshank, who competed in the F1 in Schools Technology Challenge in 2008, is undertaking a year-long industrial placement with the Formula 1 team and credits the programme for giving him the skill set he needed to apply for and win a position with Red Bull Racing.
“I wouldn’t have got this far without F1 in Schools”, says Cruickshank.
“My experience in the programme led me to secure a work placement at Red Bull Racing and I’m having the most amazing year with this World Championship-winning team.”
Matt’s journey began while at Barker College in Sydney, where he was part of a student team which used space-age engineering software and industry-specification manufacturing machines to design, make and race a miniature F1 car of the future as part of the F1 in Schools programme, the world’s largest technology competition, accessible to over 15 million students.
Their team excelled in the competition that they earned the right to represent Australia at the F1 in Schools World Finals in Malaysia where they finished third outright, beating students from more than 20 other nations, and also picked up the Best Engineered Car Award.
“F1 in Schools brought out the passion I had for motor sport and engineering. It also gave me a unique insight into F1 and taught me a lot about the industry which was vital when I applied for this job”, says Cruikshank, from Red Bull Racing’s Milton Keynes HQ.
Red Bull Racing chief technical officer, Adrian Newey, is a Patron of F1 in Schools and says, “This programme is all encompassing and doesn’t just focus on the racing aspect of motorsport.
“The challenges of working as a team, designing, engineering analysis, manufacturing, testing, marketing as well as budgeting are all tested in F1 in Schools.
“Matt has proved the value of participating in F1 in Schools and I hope that the programme will continue to bring more students into professional motorsport.”
At Red Bull Racing Cruikshank started off in an aerodynamic development team using wind tunnels and since then has moved on to the CFD department, using computational fluid dynamics to analyse the aerodynamics of the cars in a virtual environment.
“Fundamentally this is the same as the work the students do in F1 in Schools, but on a much bigger scale!” he explains.
“No day is ever the same. I work with a wide variety of people, mainly with aerodynamicists who design and scheme the part, and also the surfacing team and model designers who work with CAD to manufacture the parts.
“The work can be challenging but is also very rewarding.
“I have learned an amazing amount so far and continue to learn more each day.
“If you had told me a year ago that I would be working for the world Champions of Formula 1 I probably wouldn’t have believed you.”
The F1 in Schools programme was brought to Australia by not-for-profit organisation Re-Engineering Australia Foundation which in turn was founded in 1998 by Sydney engineer, Michael Myers.
To date, REA Foundation has had an impact on more than 100,000 high school students each year across the nation.
The standard from Australia is so high that Team Australia has won the coveted international Best Engineered Design Award at five of the past six world finals...won outright in 2006 and has scored podium finishes every year since 2008.