Rose Hill School races on the Top Gear Track!

During the Easter holiday some of our Y7 and Y8 pupils (and a support driver) attended Dunsfold Park, aka Top Gear test track, to give the latest addition to the Rose Hill Motorsport garage a thorough shake-down on a notoriously bumpy circuit. The day started well with the car passing its first MOT with only one notice – a sticker to point out the isolator switch. We got out onto the circuit and the car performed brilliantly. It was fantastic to see such a range of cars from some big names in the engineering and automotive world – Jaguar Land Rover, Siemens, Renishaw Plc to name but a few. These were ‘scratch build’ cars and had top speeds of around 40-50mph compared to our 25mph, however we did very well with similar kit cars. After the morning session we had covered 25.6 miles averaging 19mph in 1hr 40mins. We practiced driver changes and pit stops, developed pit to car communication and realised our radios need looking at! The afternoon session was cut short after 1hr 17mins due to the depletion of the batteries, but we still managed to cover 19.2 miles. Roll on our first competitive race at Goodwood Motor Circuit on Sunday 10 June.

We learned a lot from the day and following driver feedback and looking at telemetry we have a few ideas to try and improve our average speed as well as speed up pit stops and driver changes. A massive thank you to the parents who had an early start on a Sunday morning to take the pupils to Dunsfold and to our sponsors for their support in helping us develop both the F24 and Goblin electric cars – encouraging and inspiring the engineers of the future!