A GROUP of students with a passion for engineering have been named winners of a Land Rover competition after designing and building their own remote controlled 4×4 vehicle.
Team Ascent, a group of 16-year-olds from The Royal Grammar School in Worcester, scooped the prestigious Land Rover 4×4 in Schools Technology Challenge UK Champions trophy, winning an Arkwright scholarship from Land Rover, a £1,000 scholarship for Harper Adams University and a place at the Land Rover 4×4 in Schools World Final 2016 in July.
Newly-crowned champions, Team Ascent, which includes team members Jack Beet, George Mann, Faiz Ibrar, Edward Lawson, Harry Smith and Alec Berry, were judged on their skills at designing, testing and building a bespoke scale-model remote control, four-wheel-drive, all-terrain vehicle.
The students undertook a series of judging sessions, including presenting their work to a panel of judges and having their vehicle put under intense scrutiny by vehicle design specialists.
The team not only won the UK Champions title, but were also presented with the Best Rookie Team Award and the Best Engineered Vehicle Award.
Team Manager and Electronics Engineer, Alec Berry, said: “We’ve been working on our vehicle since last October, but we’d never done it before, so we really didn’t expect to win on our first attempt.
“The biggest challenge for us was keeping to a time plan and making sure we had made everything in time. We learned so much, especially with CAD/CAM software and electronics. The Challenge has been a really good experience and we definitely all want to be engineers, some of us in automotive engineering and others in aerospace.
“We need to do a bit of work on the car for the World Final, as it’s quite heavy and it’s on the limits for the dimensions, so we’ll try and cut it down, as it was quite tight for the track test, and that should help us. We’re looking forward to taking it to the next level at the World Final.”
Les Ratcliffe, Head of Community Relations at Jaguar Land Rover said: “During the competition, students gain a depth of understanding in vehicle design, development, research and manufacturing which enhances classroom learning and world of work awareness.
“Congratulations to all the teams who made it to the UK finals for achieving such a high standard and to Team Ascent, who will be representing the UK in the hotly contested world final in July.”
