Australia takes gold at 2022 F1 in Schools World Finals

Australia officially has the world’s best CO2 dragster designers following a local team’s recent victory at the 2022 F1 in Schools World Finals at Silverstone.

Recognised globally as the world’s most competitive STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) competition, this year’s F1 in Schools World Finals saw 53 of the best CO2 dragster design and racing teams come together for a week of intense competition, with a team hailing from Trinity Grammar School coming out on top.

Collectively known as Hydron, the team were tasked with designing, developing and building the fastest CO2 dragster within a strict set of rules and technical regulations before racing their car against other teams from around the world.

The end result took three years to develop from scratch and can cover a 20m track in a fraction over a second.

“The car is made from foam, with 3D printed parts and wheels manufactured from advanced engineering plastics,” Hydron head of engineering Andrew Yeang told carsales.

“To design the vehicle and conduct research, we used industry-standard software used by the engineers at Boeing and SpaceX.

“Through our development resources, like the creation of a 900-line Physics Race Model coded in Python, and continuous aerodynamic iterations, we were able to achieve a 15.61 per cent improvement from our first prototype to our final design, leaving us with our best car yet.”

Much like world land speed records, the F1 in Schools course times are the calculated averages of multiple runs, with Hydron’s ‘Proton M10’ dragster netting an average course time of just 1.060 seconds – the fastest in the competition.

If that doesn’t mean much to you, it equates to an average speed of 72km/h from a standing start over just 20m.

The dragsters are propelled by a canister of compressed CO2 which is pierced by a purpose-built starting mechanism.

As the compressed CO2 floods out of the pin-prick hole, so the car is pushed forward.

But the competition is about more than sheer speed; teams are marked on their car’s specifications, design process, quality, engineering, project management, verbal presentation and of course race times.

Hydron team principal Will Johnson said that while the team took confidence from its title as the reigning Australian champions, the World Finals would be a different kettle of fish.

“Competing against 53 teams, we never imagined that we could stand on the top step of the podium,” he said.

“Going into the World Finals, we knew that we had given our all and hoped that it would be enough to see us podium.

“We’d spent the last three years preparing for that moment, so we hoped that the countless hours and all-nighters would be enough to see our hard work pay off. And it did.”

Team head of enterprise Ben Noonan delved into just how much work actually went into the project beyond vehicle development; the portfolios and required documentation amounted to more than 30,000 words and two 10-minute videos logging their progress.

“For our team’s marketing, we figured that a big competition deserves big campaigns,” he said.

“We booked a 22 square-metre billboard for a week, garnered 290,000 social media impressions, ran an ad at Lido Cinemas and partnered with charity Carbon Positive to plant 230 trees to offset our project’s emissions.

“World champions aren’t made alone. Through carsales’ support for the World Finals, we were able to pursue our passions in engineering, marketing and management, which saw us stand on the top step of the World Finals podium.”

Several members of the team plan on pursuing a career in Formula 1, while others are eying positions in aerospace and broader engineering fields.

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