On Tuesday morning last week Team Unity arrived at the Bosch Head Office, Melbourne to drop off their trade display items in preparation for the opening of the F1 in Schools National Competition 2020.
After a smooth two hour build in the afternoon and with a little time to spare at the end, the Team completed a fabulous, professional and competitive Trade Display, equal to the best in Australia.
Wednesday morning saw the official opening ceremony of F1 in Schools National Finals take place, with many industry experts and dignitaries present as either guests or judges. To kick off the schedule of events, Team Unity was competing in the Automatic Timed Racing with Round 1 being Team Unity (PCS) vs Awaken (Blue Mountains Grammar). Vaughan and Ella did a cracking job with the engineering, gaining a gross lap time of 1.293 sec, beating Awaken in three of the four races, with a false start being the first race. Team Unity placed 5th overall in the Automated Timed Races.
Emmanuel continued the team’s success in the Reaction Racing, which saw Team Unity also placed 5th overall and move through to the knock out finals on Thursday afternoon to close out the competition.
Throughout the remainder of Wednesday and Thursday, Team Unity participated in three different verbal presentations including: Engineering CAD, Engineering Manufacturing, Trade Display interview and Team Verbal Presentation. After each interview/presentation, Team Unity finished feeling confident and pleased with what they had been able to communicate. With each section contributing towards the total 850 competition points, the team was feeling in good stead. On Thursday morning Ella Stoodley was shortlisted for the ‘Women in STEM’ award and was invited to a further one-on-one interview.
As the competition drew to a close on Thursday afternoon, the knock out competition races got underway. Team Unity was again first off the rank and was set to come up against Soar Racing from Gold Coast Christian College. After false starting in the first heat, Emmanuel had an amazing reaction time in Heat 2 with a time of 0.130 sec. However, Soar Racing came in with a total time of 1.337 sec, unfortunately knocking us out of progressing further in the knockout challenge.
Emmanuel did a fabulous job of representing our School and Team Unity. He still holds the fastest reaction time of the Grand Prix 2020 with a time of 0.130 sec.
Whilst our visit to the Formula 1 Races was cancelled on Friday morning as a precaution, Team Unity instead spent the morning relaxing at the beach, before they prepared for the final Awards Ceremony Friday evening. With all the results in and calculated, Team Unity took out the Award for ‘Best Reaction Time’ in Development Class. Overall, Team Unity placed 5th in Australia with a total score of 701.
Congratulations to Team Unity on your achievements in the F1 in Schools National Finals 2020. We look forward to hearing what they will continue to achieve as they now progress into the Junior Professional Class.
Alisa Hayden
Head of TAS
