Home > News and Events > 2017 > St Bede’s new champions in F1 in Schools  

26 October 2017

Students from St Bede’s College, Mentone, have been crowned Victorian State Champions in the 2017 F1 in Schools STEM Challenge progressing to the Australian Finals to be held in Tasmania in March 2018.

Thirteen St Bede’s students across Years 8 and 10 competed in three teams the Victorian State Finals, held at Eltham College, Research. Team Propulsion, competing in the Professional Class won the Finals and was also awarded Best Verbal Presentation, Best Industry Collaboration, Best Engineering and Best Portfolio.

Tom, Gus and Rhys from Team Propulsion will now prepare to compete against 40 other teams from across Australia for the honour of F1 in Schools National Champions and the chance to represent Australia at the 2018 F1 in Schools World Finals in Singapore.

St Bede’s College has been involved in the F1 in Schools program for four years with students becoming very passionate about the work they undertake, whether in the fields of engineering, science, finance, marketing and public relations.

According to St Bede’s Professional Learning & Lasallian Co-ordinator, Mark Micallef, ‘Many students that engage in this program have been offered employment by industry before completing their studies… others are pursued by universities with competing scholarships… and one has even been head hunted into the real world of Formula1™ racing as an aerodynamics engineer’.

The College has set a high bar for its F1 teams after St Bede’s students last year came second in the World Championships held in the USA. Read Joel Bright’s article about their experience.

The F1 in Schools STEM Challenge is the world’s largest Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics (STEM) competition and the largest secondary school program. It involves over nine million students from 17,000 schools in 31 nations.