Dubai  Young pupils from The Indian High School (TIHS), Dubai vowed to continue raising the bar following their second place finish at the F1 in Schools Technology Challenge held in Singapore last week.

"We realise what a huge achievement this is for schools in the UAE, but we also recognise the fact that we need to keep up to the standard and keep on improving for the next year," Vivian Britto, team manager of Team ABB said at a media meet held at TIHS premises yesterday.

The Dubai school was one of 25 teams from 18 nations competing from across the world at the F1 in Schools Technology Challenge held alongside last week's Singapore Grand Prix.

Team ABB Zero.9 — a collaboration between TIHS and three members from the Pine Rivers State High School, Brisbane, Australia — took the runners-up spot, behind Team Unitus from the USA, while also walking away with the "best collaboration" award.

To emulate

Besides Britto, the other team members from Dubai included Sidhant Shetty (design engineer); Prateek Mahindra (manufacturing engineer) and Saif Mahmoud (marketing manager). Josh McClennan, Greg Mills and Alysha Limmer were the trio from Australia collaborating with the Dubai team.

"For sure, we have set the standard and everyone will be out to emulate our performance at the world finals. We will always be around to help the younger lot of students," Britto promised.

The F1 in Schools Technology Challenge is an annual worldwide competition where school pupils compete against each other to design, manufacture and race their own scale model F1 cars.

The UAE was represented by two teams — Team ABB Zero.9 and Team Imports [also from Dubai], who were awarded the "best sportsmanship award".

Donald Sankey from Yas Marina, who was the first to float the idea to TIHS in November 2008, lauded the "great achievement".

"For sure, there will be an increase in the number of schools when the UAE competition is held again [in March 2011].

"The Indian High School has put down a marker and the standard will go up as well," Sankey said.

"But what the students will achieve is life skills and friends for life," he added.

Anders Gullerfelt, Manager, ABB, said his company stepped in to sponsor the Dubai team due to the visibility to ABB.