North Leamington School’s F1 team ready for Abu Dhabi final

Four North Leamington School pupils are in pole position to take on other brilliant young engineers at an international finals associated with Formula 1 racing.
The Whittle Wonders: Thomas Bradford, 15, testing engineer Harry Birch, 16, manufacturing engineer Ryan McLaren, 15, and design engineer Thomas Govern, 15.The Whittle Wonders: Thomas Bradford, 15, testing engineer Harry Birch, 16, manufacturing engineer Ryan McLaren, 15, and design engineer Thomas Govern, 15.
The Whittle Wonders: Thomas Bradford, 15, testing engineer Harry Birch, 16, manufacturing engineer Ryan McLaren, 15, and design engineer Thomas Govern, 15.

Whittle Wonders, made up of team manager Thomas Bradford, 15, testing engineer Harry Birch, 16, manufacturing engineer Ryan McLaren, 15, and design engineer Thomas Govern, 15, were crowned F1 in Schools UK National Champions 2014 at the Big Bang Science and Engineering Fair in Birmingham last Saturday.

The national finals pitted 30 winning F1 in Schools regional finals teams against each other, challenging pupils to form a Formula One team to design, manufacture, test and race a model car, as well as producing a pit display and printed portfolio and giving a verbal presentation of their work to a panel of judges.

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The North Leamington team won a place at the 2014 F1 in Schools World Finals in Abu Dhabi in the UAE, which takes place alongside the nation’s Grand Prix in November, along with tickets to the British Grand Prix at Silverstone and a Williams F1 team factory tour among other prizes.

Thomas said: “We’re really pleased to have won today.

“I think we had the best car. It was the fastest car and was well engineered.

“We’ve been working on the car for a year, designing, evaluating and refining it.

“It’s going to be brilliant to go to Abu Dhabi and now we’ll continue with the work on our car. We already have some ideas of how we want to improve it for the World Finals and hopefully it’ll be even faster as well.”

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The national win is the culmination of many months of hard work from the team which not only took victory overall but also won the Portfolio Award and Fastest F1 Car Award with their car clocking 1.128 seconds on the track.