Marist College team through to World F1 in Schools Finals

A six-member team of talented students from Athlone’s Marist College will represent their school at the World Finals of the prestigious science competition, F1 in Schools, in Australia next year having beaten off stiff competition from 60 other schools at the national F1 finals in Galway last weekend.

Not content with taking second place overall in the national finals, the Catalyst Racing team from the Marist scooped a total of three awards and made history by recording the fastest race time ever in the UK and Ireland with their miniature car. One of their members, Donal McDermott, also won the individual Meta Engineer of the Future award.

F1 in Schools is an international STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) competition in which groups of between three and six students have to design and manufacture a miniature F1 car out of the official F1 Model Block using CAD/CAM design tools.

Marist College has an enviable record when it comes to F1 in Schools with no less than five previous teams securing a place at the World Finals, and the 2016 team emerging as outright winners.

This year’s team consists of Donal McDermott (design engineer) and Owen McNamara (team manager) both from Coosan; Eoin Kane (graphic designer from Tang) and Conor Rowe (scrutineer) from Ballymahon; David O’Shea (finance and sponsorship manager) from Retreat and Adam Kenny (manufacturing manager), from Walderstown.

All six are in Transition Year and five of the six are just 16 years old. They started their project last October under the watchful eye of DCG teacher, Paul Hardiman, and have spent almost every day since then working to perfect their their miniature car.

“We went through about 40 different iterations of our car before we came up with the final model, so there is a huge amount of work involved,” says Donal McDermott. “We spent every day in school working on it, and also a lot of time outside of school, but it was worth it.”

When they formed the Catalyst Racing team, the six students were not all close friends, but Donal says they have become “very close” over the past number of months as they spent many long hours working on the project. “I think all of us learned where our various strengths and weaknesses lie, and it has taught us a lot about ourselves as individuals as well as teaching us about team work.”

Despite the fact that Donal McDermott scooped the Meta Engineer of the Future award, he says he was “much more excited” to see the Catalyst team come second overall in the competition. “This whole competition is about teamwork, and we could not have made it to the World F1 finals without the contribution made by each team member,” he says.

The Marist team smashed an eight-year fastest time record by racing their miniature F1 car down the track at an eye-watering speed of 1.028 seconds, and they are hoping to replicate that when they attend the World Finals, which are due to take place in Melbourne, Australia next year.

The €1,500 prize money that the students received for coming second in the national finals will be “ploughed straight back into the team” according to Donal McDermott in order to fund their trip to Australia.

“It will cost roughly €60,000 to fund the trip to Australia for the Catalyst team and two teachers,” he says, “so we will be doing a lot of fundraising and we are always looking for corporate sponsors to come on board.”

The team raised upwards of €2,000 to fund their path to the national finals, but going to the World Finals is going to be “a huge challenge financially” and the team have set themselves the ambitious target of raising €100,000.

Donal is hoping to study electronic engineering in college and says a number of other team members are also interested in a similar career path. However, a very important element of the F1 experience is the enterprise side, which involves finance, social media, graphic design, communications and management which opens up a myriad of options for students also.

“We are really looking forward to the World Finals, but there is still a lot of work to be done in the meantime” he says.