Eyes on the Prize
Dated: 08/05/2009
Don Sankey hopes the Formula One designers, engineers and fans of the future are in his classroom. He is the extremely enthusiastic regional director of F1 In Schools for the Middle East, part of a worldwide programme where school students compete to design model Formula 1 cars and manage simulated teams. The competition is judged not just on who designs the fastest model F1 car but also on team marketing and written and verbal presentations, all of which must be completed in English.
Teams compete at a school level before going on to challenge other schools in their emirate and from there, a UAE champion school will be determined. Within the Middle East, F1 In Schools now has students from Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar as well as the UAE vying for regional supremacy, and the winning school will be able to compete at an international level. So far, 31 countries are involved in the international competition. The F1 In Schools international competition has been running for four years with world championships being held in Australia, Malaysia and twice in the UK.
After operating for almost a year at temporary premises in Dubai, the Middle East’s only dedicated F1 In Schools facility opened at the start of April this year at the Dubai Autodrome. Thirty-seven schools across the UAE are already involved, and the Federal Ministry of Education has officially endorsed the programme. In between guiding students through the design process at the Autodrome facility, Sankey presents the F1 In Schools concept to school assemblies. So far, only one school has declined to participate, and he hopes that a similar success rate can be emulated in other Middle East countries and more facilities can be set up.
“We have the Dubai Autodrome right here, we have the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix at the end of the year – this is becoming a huge area for motorsports so it should be a no-brainer that UAE school students, the people who will be involved in racing teams and fill the grandstands, should get involved,” says Sankey.
As well as schools, corporate groups can try their hand at the programme. Sankey says the facility is now trying to attract sponsors to the project as part of their corporate responsibility budget.
“This is a great way to not only introduce your brand to school students but to be part of something positive for the kids.”
The participating schools receive free computer design software so the student teams can work on their car designs in their classrooms. When The National visited the F1 In Schools facility, Rashid Bin Humaid School, an Emirati boys’ school from Ajman, and Rufaida Al Ansaria Middle School, an Emirati girls’ school in Ras Al Khaimah’s Khat community, were having introductory sessions to gauge the level of interest among both schools’ students.
Among the boys’ school students, they were quick to raise their hands and excitedly express a desire to be team managers, head designers and chief engineers all at once. The girls’ school students, meanwhile, were more subdued, but when they came to try the computer design software for the first time, some students came up with designs better suited to Manolo Blahnik than McLaren-Mercedes but there were plenty of students who created aerodynamic shapes for their potential race cars.
Robin Dada, the academic programme co-ordinator of the Ministry of Education’s Madares Al Ghad (Schools of Tomorrow) scheme, is a strong champion of F1 In Schools. Madares Al Ghad was first introduced to modernise UAE schools two years ago and she says the innovative F1 In Schools programme is an excellent way to introduce students to a new way of learning.
“There are so many different subjects that are relevant to F1 in Schools,” says Dada. “There are English language skills, science, maths, design – the project lends itself so well to all these areas. Madares Al Ghad is about modern curriculums for schools and modern teaching methods as well as professional development for teachers and F1 In Schools is an excellent fit.
“Any school reform project is hard, but there is real change in the teachers and the schools happening and this is a part of this,” says Dada, as we sit in a classroom surrounded by the girls’ school students coming to grips with the design software for the first time.
After the introduction to the design software, the students were then shown the machine that turns blocks of balsa wood into model F1 cars from the computer designs. “This is like a giant printer, only instead of using paper and ink, this uses a blade and the block of wood,” Sankey explains. It takes about 45 minutes for a design to be transferred from the virtual world to a carved miniature racer.
Once the car is cut into shape, testing then takes place with a wind tunnel and the students can experiment with different designs for optimum efficiency. In competition, the teams also have to come up with a team livery, a business plan, organise sponsorship and present their team concept to a panel of judges.
Finally, the cars are tested on a 25m straight track where they aim to achieve a time of less than one second. The model cars are powered with a CO2 canister and the cars are fired down the straight either automatically or by triggers that test the students’ reaction times. Fast reaction times with the trigger are yet another way the students can score points in the F1 In Schools competition. Just like a real F1 race, there are five red lights in a row on the starting grid and, once all five have gone out, the triggers can be pressed to launch the cars.
Fifteen-year-old Mohammed Al Halaby took on Abdullah Mohammed, 11, in the boys’ school best-of-three reaction time shoot-out and only just beat his younger rival. It was clear that the introductory session had piqued his interest in being involved in an F1 in Schools team. “I think I already have a team picked with my friends,” he says.
“I’m not really interested in the Formula One sport – the designing is more fun than the racing.”
Not surprisingly then, Al Halaby hopes to be the design engineer in his team and has career aspirations in this area. “I’d like to become an engineer, insh’allah,” he says.
The Ras Al Khaimah girls’ school had a bit more time to race cars on the 25m track and Jahani Saed Ahmed, a diminutive, 11-year-old was the undisputed trigger finger champion. With intense concentration, she was unbeatable against classmates and teachers with a best reaction time of 0.138s, faster than either of the two boys or the adults who participated in a corporate challenge the previous day.
The spontaneous applause as Jahani remained undefeated, not to mention her victorious smile, was indicative of the enthusiasm that is being generated amongst students who are introduced to F1 in Schools. “You can see that look on their faces when you have planted that seed in their heads and it all makes it worthwhile,” says Sankey.
