Well that was eventful... What happened? What's Next?Hi everyone, I’m Maisie from Eclipse and this is our first blog of the new 2021 season! We realise this is going to be a strange season with the whole lockdown and uneasiness in society, but as a team we have decided to get cracking in the best way we can. As engineers we love a problem solving challenge! Following on from Nationals 2020 we would expect most teams to find it hard to get going again. Although the virtual experience was amazing and enabled us to do what we love, it didn’t have the same impact as being there and socialising with all you guys! As a team we decided to turn down the offer of going to the World Finals so we could focus on this new season. This was due to our lack of experience in the competition, we just did not feel ready for the World stage. Also we wanted to represent our sponsors well and didn’t want to let them down. Focusing on the 2021 season, with school being closed, the whole team has found it difficult to get motivated. To overcome this we started organising online meetings and making sure we had a plan for Regionals. As a team we have formed support bubbles to check how each other are getting on with their allocated tasks and to support wherever necessary. This process also motivates us to get our jobs done as we do not want to be the one letting the others down. Recently we started work on our social media strategy, we will see what else this season brings, hopefully we can go into school soon to do some testing and development to the car or we will start to figure out an alternative way... Hello everyone! It's Javier, Team Principal from Eclipse. After our first Regional finals in January of 2020 we were looking forward to meeting everyone at the National finals until the blasted COVID put an end to that! Having to work virtually towards the National finals was a real challenge, it really stumped us at the start but we found solutions to overcome the various challenges it imposed on us. Using Zoom, Google Software, Discord and other social media enabled us to keep in contact with each other, share work and manage to get everything finished in time for the National Finals. With me being in Year 11 during lockdown 1, I had my GCSE exams cancelled, funnily enough this really helped out, as Team Principal & Design Engineer I had all the time in the world to organise meetings with the team and design and manufacture our car - producing the car at home, well, was quite hard to say the least... Despite this it definitely helped keep my frame of mind positive during a time of such uncertainty, having something to focus on was such a great positive through what could have been quite a depressing time... Luckily, all the challenges we had to overcome were worth it! We managed to place 3rd at Nationals, winning Best Pit Display and being nominated for Best Design & Engineering Portfolio, this was very unexpected in our first National finals and we were delighted. This season we have found it difficult to find motivation after Nationals, especially with so much happening in the World. Not being able to meet at school had a big impact on us so we decided to take some time to recuperate and hopefully regain our spark. We have started contacting sponsors to work with once again, thus creating many deadlines we have to meet. This has really helped focus us again as we have to make them, especially when the sponsors have given us their time and effort, we cannot let them down. We have also added a new team member, Tom. We hope that some ‘fresh blood’ will also help freshen up the team and give us some new directions of thought. UP NEXT: Stay tuned and come back next time to find out if we were able to do any testing or development of the car, if we met the deadlines with our most important sponsors and more...
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the AuthorsA Team's Eye View is brought to you by the following F1 in Schools competitors: Maisie and Javier
'Eclipse' Queen Elizabeths Grammar School, Kent Archives
August 2021
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