Champagne and Schumacher gave a racy new image to engineering yesterday at an international schools competition in Birmingham. Teams from 13 schools were at the Jaguar plant in Castle Bromwich to take part in the first Jaguar F1 Team In Schools international finals. Their brief was to design a racing car or a drag car out of a small block of balsa wood and race them in a straight line using carbon dioxide cartridges. After creating the vehicle shape using a computer-aided design package at school, the pupils tested its aerodynamic qualities in a smoke tunnel and its drag in a wind tunnel. In Britain the competition, which also includes a verbal and visual presentation on their work, forms part of their engineering exam work. Yesterday's contest was won by Team Turbo, an entry from pupils aged 11-18 from Bloomsburg High School, Pennsylvania, USA. Heather Hawthorn, national project director for the Jaguar F1 Team in Schools - which is sponsored by Jaguar, BA systems and Denshaw - said: "The British, particularly the young, view engineering as dirty, boring and repetitive. "Many initiatives have been launched but few seem to have made much impact. The premise of the Jaguar F1 in Schools is a simple and easy one - young people are fascinated by cars, particularly Formula One racing cars." Thomas Lambert, aged 15, constructed racing car 'Sidewinder' with three schoolmates from Hull Trinity House School in Hull, which represented England in the final. He said he wanted to go into conceptual and automotive design. "I like working with CAD and aerodynamics. "Since I was very little I wanted 3D software to design something in 3D and get it built. Seeing something being built from a design is very exciting. "We were all coming up with crazy ideas. We were not directly influenced by Jaguar or anything else because there is very little that is purely aerodynamic. The most challenging thing for us was the time it took." Andrew Denford, founder of F1 in Schools, said 1,475 schools had registered for information on next year's challenge. "Each team here has got different ideas about the bit of engineering that will make it go faster," he said. "It is uniquely exciting and challenging for them. The result is that kids who, until a couple of years ago, didn't know what they wanted to do have picked up engineering and run with it. What they are doing in their class at school, industry is already calling on." | 
