Eclipsed by sheer power

While the kingdom's annual sporting race event gathers feverish pace, teenage students in Isa Town displayed their racing skills and sped into the 'F1 in Schools World Championships' that will be held in Singapore later this year.

Team Eclipse of the St Christopher's Senior School was declared '2010 F1 in Schools Champions of Bahrain'.

They won on garnering the maximum number of points from a range of activities including a 10-page portfolio, a five-minute verbal presentation, use of CAD/CAM, car design and branding as well as racing their 1/20th scale model car down a 20-metre track.

Although their car was second fastest - only bettered by Team Typhoon - Team Eclipse driver Marc Steene produced the best reaction time.

The winning team was led by Year 13 student, Jean-Clive Bailey, who had earlier been part of Team EP1C and had taken part in the world championships in London last September. Calling it an unbelievable experience Jean-Clive, 19, said: "Last year it was all new and it was our first-time experience.

"As the competition was held much earlier this year I tried to focus on what we are good at and also build on our past experiences. The next step is getting sponsorship. Other teams at the internationals were one step ahead of us because their sponsorship money allowed them to have better outfits, better quality team displays ... so we want to raise as much money as possible and use it in the best way we can."

Team Eclipse comprising resource manager, Marc Steene, 15, graphics designer, Krishna Subramani, 17, design engineers, Kripa Balachandran, 18 and Nazar Abubaker, 19 and graphics designer, Ahmed Mohseni, 18, also grabbed the awards for the best manufactured car.

The competition in Bahrain saw 12 other teams of 51 youngsters aged between 13 and 19 battle it out at the school sports hall in Isa Town this week.

The best Key Stage 3 team was awarded to Team Phoenix with Ayesha Shaheen, Sanjana Sarkar and Maryam Helmi. Other winners of the evening were Team Blu (Mahmood Marzooq, Nick Walker, Loay Spernick and Hoomam Makarem) and Team Nvatia (Niels Broekhuijsen, Shan Gnanasekaram, Hyejin Kim and Aisha Quadir) who won the Judges Favourite Team Award and Best Team Presentation.

Head of design and technology, Simon Jones, who has led on the entire project said: "Lots of new teams and students are joining in on the competition from a wide range of year groups. We have moved the date of the school finals earlier in the year to allow the winning team to prepare for the world championship.There has been some interest in Bahrain but no other school has yet to take up the challenge."

The competition was judged Mr Jones, St Christopher's School governor David Axtell and design technology teachers Kimberley Chadwick and Natalie Fisher.