TWO teams of Tavistock College students had a fantastic day of racing and engineering challenges last month, where they raced their single seat electric race cars against 34 other South West school teams.

Throughout the year, the students have been hard at work after school and in their lunchtimes working with the technology faculty to design and build their cars.

The younger team comprises Year 8 and 9 students Nathan Savage, Joe McCormick, Esme Lovell and Sam Thomson, all of whom applied for the team in October and constructed their car from kit form. 

Starting from a steel chassis kit, the team created a great car which they named ‘Dust Devil’.

The senior team, which includes Year 10 students Tom Harrison, Bryce Lovell, Ben Anning, Jack Kerswill, Cameron Stuart and Year 7 student Charlie Elkington, were racing their second car named ‘Silver Surfer’. 

This one they designed and engineered from scratch out of much lighter aluminium in order to improve the efficiency in endurance style races.

Tom Harrison said: ‘Building it from scratch was a huge challenge, but it was also a lot more rewarding when we had finished it, to see it racing against other teams. It has been a massively inspiring project for all the team and we have all picked up many useful skills along the way.’

Both cars were taken down to the race at Newquay’s St Mawgan airport and the students spent the day tweaking their vehicles, solving a wide range of engineering issues and racing in the two 90 minute races of the day.

The aim was to cover as much distance as possible in the hour and a half.

Pete Keegan, who leads on GreenPower at the college, said: ‘The students were just incredible. I was so proud to see them keeping a cool head when technical issues were arising and solving them through the engineering skills they have developed over these last couple of years. Being involved in GreenPower is so inspiring.’

For the second year being part of the GreenPower scheme, the team was pleased with its best result of 15th and have come away from the event with enthusiasm and ideas for the future developments of their cars.

The team expressed thanks to its sponsors.