Big dash for race win and for jobs

The Chronicle – Toowoomba

Callum Bentley:  10 September 2012

The team shirts were on, the cars were primed and the tension was high.

With an almighty hiss, the two cars fired off down the track and crossed the finish line in a little over one second.

In the blink of an eye, the hard work and dedication of Ryan Neumann and Jamie Cox had paid off and who crossed the finish line first seemed to not even matter.

The boys took part in the F1 in Schools regional titles held at Concordia Lutheran College Redlands Campus yesterday.

The competition is a fun and interactive team based activity which encourages to get involved in engineering, marketing and business based around their carbon dioxide powered model cars.

Since April, students from Concordia Lutheran College, Toowoomba Christian Schools and Warwick State High School have been designing everything from their team shirts, to their team logos right down to the aerodynamic design of their cars.

Concordia technology teacher Mark Carlile said advances in technologies available to schools were opening for students interested in engineering.

“Our goal was to get kids jobs and we have already had one of our past students picked up by RME Engineers in Toowoomba straight out of school purely based on the skills he learnt in this program” he said.

“We have the gear available for the kids to design all components of their cars and them to fabricate them here as well.”