Four high school students sponsored by Swinburne have won an international competition to design and race a miniature Formula 1 car.
Team Hyperdrive beat 50 teams from 27 countries to be named World Champions as well as receiving the award for the Best Engineered Car.
The team, made up of Trinity Grammar students Alec Alder, Kyle Winkler, David Greig and Hugh Bowman, had to engineer, manufacture and race a miniature Formula 1 car at the Sepang International Circuit in Kuala Lumpur last month.
Swinburne PhD students Nalin Randeniya and Andrew Danylec provided expert engineering, technical and technological support to the team.
The technical support to Team Hyperdrive was facilitated by Dr Ambarish Kulkarni, who supervises Mr Randeniya and Mr Danylec at Swinburne’s Department of Mechanical Engineering and Product Design Engineering.
As winners of the 2017 competition, each member of Team Hyperdrive has been awarded scholarships to City University of London and the University College of London (UCL).
Mr Bowman, the team manager, describes the win as Team Hyperdrive’s proudest moment since it formed in 2015.
“Our greatest achievement is becoming World Champions, against millions of students globally,” he says.
“But also winning the Best Engineered Car award on the global stage is a credit to Kyle and David’s work.
“It wouldn’t have been possible without Swinburne’s insight.”
Team Hyperdrive also won the award for Best Engineered Car.
Mr Randeniya says he played a role in connecting the Hyperdrive team with the individuals who provided the technical support.
“I found the right people and have organized meetings to introduce them to each other,” he says.
Mr Bowman says the most challenging aspect of the design was the aerodynamics.
“David was our aerodynamics engineer, running many Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations as well as a lot of research and testing on different shapes and design concepts,” he says.
“Continuous aerodynamic refinement and evolution was key to our development strategy to minimise drag and create efficiency.”
Formula 1 CEO, Chase Carey, attended the event and shared his excitement for the future of engineering.
“The passion, the intelligence, the creativity, the maturity that you guys have shown, it’s just incredible,” he told the competitors.
“If our future is in your hands, we’ve got a great future in this world..
“Speaking on behalf of Formula 1, we couldn’t be prouder of Formula 1 in Schools, it is our official education initiative.”