On Monday 31st March, 36 Key Stage 3 students, four subject prefects and four Mathematics teachers had an incredibly early start to go and visit the F1 Racing team of Williams in Grove, Oxfordshire.  The 36 students were selected from across Year 7 and 8 due to their ongoing maths work, going above and beyond the expectations of the classroom and homework in our subject.

Williams put on an incredible day for all our students (and teachers).  We got to go inside the real working buildings of the racing team and meet some of their inspiring team.  Alex Albon, the team's leading F1 driver, was even in the building, but we unfortunately didn't manage to catch a glimpse of him.  Our students behaved impeccably as we negotiated around their usual working day, albeit they were getting prepared for the upcoming Japanese Grand Prix, some leaving that day and some the next.

In the morning, we were lucky enough to enjoy the experience of visiting the onsite museum, which is not open to the public, where the team's engineers explained what had happened through the years and a lot of the reasons behind designs and functions of the different cars.  We then got to try our hand as an F1 driver in their simulators used by the team professionals.  We took it in turns of 20 to battle it out across some of the F1 circuits, including Silverstone, Monaco and Japan.  With all of us on the grid at the start, we even had races where we could experience the damages that driving did to our cars and potentially lead us to retire from the races.

In the afternoon, we were given an idea of an engineering task that the team faces, when creating a nose cone that needed to crumple, to meet safety requirements.  They team had to budget, produce, test and get to a final test of their nose cones, all before presenting it and being judged by the Williams team.  They had to use this time and experience to work out how the nose cones could not be too rigid, not too soft and lead it to crumple within a specific testing parameter.  Needless to say, the boys enjoyed smashing things up for all the right reasons!

I am sure that the trip has helped inspire some of the boys to think how this could be a career option in the future, or engineering as a whole and I look forward to hopefully being invited back in years to come, perhaps to meet one or two of our Ex pupils.