TWO teams of Barry Comprehensive school pupils have moved a step closer to a trip to Singapore for the F1 in Schools World Finals.

The pupils are one of five schools who saw success at the South Wales F1 in Schools Regional Final, a competition linked to Formula 1 which inspires students to put classroom theory into practice designing, developing, manufacturing and racing a scale model F1 race car.

BCS Racing from Barry Comprehensive School took the honours in the F1 class of the competition and a sister team from the school, BCS Bloodhound won the Bloodhound Class.

The teams have both won through to the F1 in Schools National Finals.

F1 in Schools challenges students to create their own Formula One team which is commissioned to design, construct and race the fastest miniature 21cm long scale model built from a block of balsa wood and powered by a compressed air cylinder.

Each team of between three and six students creates a ‘pit’ display at the Regional Final and showcases their work in developing their race car, with a verbal and written presentation for the judges. The teams then race their model cars on a specially designed 20 metre test track, with the cars covering the distance in just over one second.

In addition to representing their country at the World Finals, the F1 in Schools UK champions and runners up will receive tickets to the 2015 British Grand Prix at Silverstone.

Andrew Denford, Founder and Chairman, F1 in Schools said: “All the students showed an outstanding level of skills and the tremendous amount of hard work put into creating their F1 in Schools team and car is to be commended.

"Bringing the school curriculum to life through this programme appeals to students and demonstrates how powerful practical application of theory can be in education.

"Judging the competition is never easy as all the teams are so good, but being judged is also a great challenge for the students and they all did extremely well with their presentations to the judges and coping with the pressure of racing their cars.

"I know every student will have benefited from taking part in F1 in Schools - whether it is learning new skills, growing in confidence or making new friends - and they all now know that engineering can be exciting, challenging and fun.”