Wheeler F1 racing team prepares for its first international competition

Members of the Wheeler F1 racing team had barely gotten off the plane after winning a national competition in June when they knew what they had to do next.

“We were on cloud nine for about three hours,” said Arul Gupta, the executive manager and marketing director of the AeroFlow Racing team, which includes five students who attend the Wheeler STEM Magnet School.

They’re spending what’s left of their summer redesigning their foam and light plastic miniature vehicle for the F1 in Schools world competition in Singapore in September.

They know they have to step up their game in marketing, project management, promotions, community outreach and fundraising—the other components of the entrepreneurially-constructed F1 in Schools concept—in facing the global elites of the circuit for the first time.

There’s little time to waste.

“We’re doing prototypes now” for the cars they want to take to Singapore, said Michael Jin, the manufacturing engineer for Aeroflow Racing.

At the F1 in Schools National Finals in Austin, Texas, their car posted a time of 1.3 seconds along a track of 24 meters, or 78 feet (as they demonstrated in April at the Wheeler STEAM Symposium), the best time of all the cars there.

In Singapore, Gupta said, “1.3 isn’t going to cut it.” He figures Aeroflow needs to cut it down to 1.1 seconds to have a shot against the elite teams, especially those coming from Australia and Britain, the hotbeds for F1 in Schools.

The AeroFlow team scored around 920 points out of a possible 1000 in all phases of the national competition, which included teams with ages ranging from 9 to 19.

While team members are proud of that, they know that most of the 40 teams heading to Asia are more experienced than AeroFlow, which was formed in the fall of 2016. The global competition, Gupta said, is also “much more rigorous” in judging.

“They don’t grade just how fast your car goes,” he said. “They judge design, marketing, social media strategy, all of that.”

The AeroFlow team even had to design and update its own website as part of the competition.

Last year, the Wheeler students finished fifth in their maiden national competition. “We wanted to the best we could,” said Gupta, who lives in the Pope High School district and who like his fellow AeroFlow team members commutes to classes at Wheeler. “It gave us a better idea what we had to improve upon.”

The speed of the car had to get better, and they decided making it as light as possible was the key.

Getting that weight to 50 grams, the minimum allowed in F1 in Schools, is an exacting and time-consuming task.

That task fell largely to Jin, who lives in the Walton High School district. “When you’re making a car, getting the design right is so important,” he said. “Adding a couple of coats of paint can make a big difference.”

The construction includes forming the car body out of a foam block, then adding plastic components that include the wheels and other elements that enhance speed.

As they were evolving their model over the last school year, the AeroFlow team members consulted with Georgia Tech aerospace engineering professors who advised them on lift and downforce.

“The car’s acting almost like a rocket,” Gupta said.

“The real difficulty is getting the right finishing on it,” Jin said, with the ideal being “a perfectly smooth surface.”

Added Gupta: “It should be smooth as glass,” with a glossy look.

The intricate attention to detail in F1 in Schools is paramount, but the rising Wheeler seniors on the AeroFlow team say they embrace the challenge that’s largely outside the classroom.

While they submit college applications (among the schools are MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Cal Tech, Stanford, Georgia Tech and Emory), they enjoy learning the well-rounded skills they have to develop.

“You get to be extremely hands-on,” said Gupta, who in his role works with Novelis, an aluminum products manufacturer that is AeroFlow’s main corporate sponsor.

Even the AeroFlow name came after a lot of thought among team members. “How can we be known for something that’s related to what we’re doing,” he said. “That sounds about right.”

Jin said he especially likes the chance to “simulate the real world” and “this shows what drives innovation.

“We feel like we’re in a pretty good place. We know what our competition is and what we are doing well.”

The other immediate challenge the AeroFlow team has is raising money to make the trip to Singapore.

They estimated that all their costs, from entry fees to air fare, food and lodging, will cost around $37,000.

Thus far, they’ve raised around $24,000, with less than two months before their trip.

The AeroFlow team has created a GoFundMe page to accept donations from anyone wishing to help out.

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