MOTORSNEWS:DESPITE HONDA'S withdrawal from Formula One racing earlier this year its Formula One schools competition to design a racing car continues, and a team of students from St Ailbe's School in Tipperary town was declared the overall Irish winner of the 2009 Honda-powered F1 in Schools Technology Challenge this week.
Team members Matthew Ryan, Olivia Breen, Daniel Bres-nan, Nathan Dunne and Simon Ryan competed against 24 finalist teams from all over Ireland to claim the title and trophy, as well as the opportunity to represent Ireland next year in the 2010 World Championships.
The overall winners also shared €3,500 in prize money, and each member received their own individual Xbox and Xbox game.
The Formula One international competition, which is run in Ireland by the Irish Computer Society (ICS), this year challenged seven million students across the globe to design, build and race compressed air-powered model F1 cars.
Frank Kennedy, sales and marketing director of Universal Honda, presenting the winning trophy, congratulated the overall winners and said: “From a corporate point of view we see F1 in schools as the ideal opportunity to promote team building, management, technological and design skills of students in a very creative way.”
Using Computer-Aided Design (CAD) software to create virtual 3D models of their cars, the teams collaborated with third-level F1 Make Centres on their manufacturing.
The colleges used their special milling equipment to convert the designs into real model F1 racers. The cars, measuring about 25cm and made of balsa wood, can reach scale speeds of 350km/h.
In addition to racing head-to-head, the competing teams were judged on the quality of engineering, portfolio, resource management, marketing, graphic design and sponsorship activities, and on a verbal presentation of their work.
A&E doctor launches information campaign
AN A&E doctor has revealed his harrowing experiences in a new dangerous driving information campaign in the North.
Dr Gerry Lane of Letterkenny General Hospital, Co Donegal, recounts the grim task of informing next of kin that their loved ones have died in the TV advert. Lane also details many of the horrific injuries he has treated.
“This is what I deal with every day . . . what drives me crazy is, all of that is, in general, preventable,” he said at the “Crashed Lives” launch yesterday.
“Driver impairment through alcohol and drugs [is the principal cause] in more than 20 per cent [of incidents], speed more than 26 per cent, carelessness, inattention and losing focus nearly 40 per cent of incidents on our roads here.”
Record Nano orders
Tata Motors, the Indian truck-maker that owns Jaguar and Land Rover, has received 203,000 orders for its Nano, the world’s cheapest car – more than double the initial sales plan.
The bookings amount to almost 25 billion rupees (€377 million), Tata Motors said in a statement yesterday. Deliveries start in July and are expected to be completed in the last quarter of 2010, the firm said.
Tata Motors will choose the first 100,000 customers for the Nano by lottery, leaving the company with at least a year of production as backlog. Surging demand from first-time buyers and motorcyclists in India contrast with plunging sales in the US and Europe, where job losses and economic recession have kept consumers away from showrooms.