吃瓜不打烊

12 December 2016

By Joel Bright, St Bede’s College, Mentone

When we, as a team look back on our achievements and accomplishments in this competition it is hard for us to believe that not only have we come second in the world in a worldwide educational competition, not only have we created the fastest car in the history of the program, but we have represented our country so well at such a young age, and we have developed skills that will last us a lifetime.

However, it all had to start somewhere and for Peter, Will and Joel, the 吃瓜不打烊 contingent of the team what was initially a period of thinking our participation in the competition was over after the Australian National Finals in March, we were given the news that we would be given the opportunity to represent our country internationally in the competition. It was vindication that would we had been working so hard for was indeed achievable.

What ensued was months upon months of hard work, dedication, sacrifices, collaboration and many, many learning experiences. The team’s engineers, Jesse and Luke were hard at work researching, testing and designing what was to become the world’s fastest F1 in Schools car, something that can’t be achieved by the faint hearted.

While this was going on it was Nicole and Joel raising what ended up being a total of $65,000 to ensure the team could compete to the best of their ability and it was Will and Peter designing and implementing what was the ever present Infinitude brand. And it isn’t to be forgotten that this all took places every day across two states, South Australia and Victoria, something that was a challenge in itself.

By the time the months had flown by it was time for the World Finals, taking place in Austin, Texas. The experience was once in a lifetime and something that not many will ever get to experience. Reminiscing with students from over 20 countries, getting private tours of the F1 Circuit of the Americas track, experiencing the pressure of intense judging and developing friendships that will last a lifetime were only some of the benefits of the World Finals.

However, when it all boils down, and we analyse what was important, being second on the world stage and obliterating the world record is an amazing achievement, but what is more than amazing is the skills in Project Management, Marketing, Engineering and Graphic Design that we have learnt and applied through managing a business. It would not have been possible without our mentors Mrs Rebecca Seel and Mr Mark Micallef who most definitely deserve an honourable mention. We hope we have done our country proud.

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