Canadian students on grid at F1 In Schools World Championships 2009

It is not only McLaren, Brawn, Ferrari, Renault and their rival Formula 1 teams that are competing in an F1 World Championship.

Team FORCE from Woburn CI, Toronto in Canada has won a place on the grid for the F1 in Schools World Championships 2009 which take place next week and the team has been spending many hours preparing their race car and pit display for this prestigious event.

Racing against over 30 F1 in Schools teams, seventeen countries will be competing in this innovative educational initiative, all racing for glory, which brings with it the Bernie Ecclestone World Championship Trophy and coveted Automotive and Motorsport Engineering scholarships to City University London for each member of the winning team.


Team FORCE from the Woburn CI are Xin Ning Ma, Henry Wainam Fung, Nishit Krupeshkumer Parikh, Ling Jun Zhou (Mr Ma), Andrew J Berneshawi and Kirtan Rakeshbhai Patel.

They will be joined by River East Transcona School who are part of a collaboration effort with an Australian School. The team known as AC Racing includes David Woitowicz, Victor Hiebert, Ben Kuilman, Stephanie Hiebert and Crawford Boyce.

The teams won their place at the 2009 F1 in Schools Canadian Finals, securing them their chance to represent their country in the 2009 World Championships.

The focus of the event is the time trials, with the teams racing their own car on a specially designed 20-metre track to test the speed of each F1 model. Powered by compressed air, the cars are fired down the track at a scale speed equivalent to over 220 mph. With the world record standing at just over one second, it's fast and furious action on the race track for these engineering protégés.

This unique student challenge is the largest global educational initiative. School children aged 11 to 18 use CAD/CAM software to design, build and test a model compressed air powered balsa wood F1 car of the future and it takes place in over 30 countries around the world, with an estimated 6 million school children competing.