Author: The Greenpower Team
We are very proud to have been featured in the latest edition of Motorsport UK's 'Revolution' magazine. Greenpower Education Trust and Motorsport UK have been working together for over 10 years and the partnership is essential in allowing us to run our events.
Motorsport UK's CEO, Hugh Chambers, alongside David Richards, Greenpower patron, attended the Greenpower International Finals at Goodwood Motor Circuit on 13th October. You can read Hugh's thoughts below and can find a link to the full magazine at the bottom of this page.
The Greenpower Team.
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"One of the extraordinary things about motorsport is the sheer diversity of discipline formats, types of venues and technology. Looking back across the past month we’ve seen the conclusion of multiple championships in circuit racing, cross country, karting and many more, but the one which stood out for me at the beginning of the month was the finals of the Greenpower Challenge. David Richards and I travelled down to Goodwood to observe firsthand the culmination of a year of hard work and enterprise on the part of over 700 teams from across the UK, having competed in more than 30 regional events and involving over 10,000 students from primary school age through to university. If you’re not familiar with this competition the Greenpower Education Trust is a UK based charity which gets young people enthusiastic about science and engineering by challenging them to design, build and race an electric car.
There are three age categories running from nine-years old through to 25, with varying degrees of complexity and engineering challenge. At the first tier, Formula Goblin, there is a kit provided to schools that takes around 15 hours to build, and which can then be dismantled and re-built each year with a new team of children, who then compete in the Greenpower race days. This is a brilliant entry point for schools and children to begin to play around with the broad concept. When it starts to get interesting from an engineering point of view is Formula 24, from the age of 11, where they are given the opportunity to build and race either a more sophisticated Greenpower kit car, or using supplied motor and batteries, a car of their own design to Greenpower’s safety and technical regulations. I have to say that the sheer diversity of engineering solutions that were on display at Goodwood were impressive. The regulations stipulate a very tight envelope for design but even within those constraints the ingenuity on display and the engineering excellence in manufacturing from these school teams was something to behold. The St Paul’s School in Barnes, London, even had a 3D printed F1 style steering wheel adorned with all sorts of buttons! The essence of the competition is to extract the maximum distance from a standard battery pack and power unit, and it is when you see the machines racing, achieving speeds of up to 50mph, that you appreciate the relatively small tweaks that are made to the power train that all result in a significant difference in performance. Wrapping the electric motor in small gauge copper tubing acts as a heat diffuser and improves power delivery. I really appreciate everything that the Greenpower organisation does in bridging the gap between the mainstream motorsport industry and schools, and in creating awareness of the excitement of STEM subjects for kids that may not previously have considered taking this educational route. The Duke of Richmond and David Richards were founding patrons of the charity, and I know they are very proud of everything that’s been achieved since its inception."
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Link to Motorsport UK's Revolution Magazine: www.motorsportuk.org/revolution-magazine/
