Alberta students represent Canada at STEM Racing World Finals

Students from Strathcona-Tweedsmuir School entered a car and created a team to compete against other schools through the STEM Racing program.

Six students from Strathcona-Tweedsmuir School (STS) in Okotoks were one of two Canadian teams that competed in the Aramco STEM Racing World Finals 2025 in Singapore.

The event was hosted Sept.27 to Oct. 2 and saw 83 teams from 34 countries compete.

“The team that wins get full ride scholarships to University College London, there’s a reason why students value it so much, there’s a reason why they think it’s such an amazing competition,” said Ryan Unterschultz, STS design learning lead.

“It is a university level, if not professional level experience.”

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Unterschultz says this is the first year STS students have participated in STEM Racing, formerly known as F1 in Schools.

The event challenges students to form their own Formula 1 team and design, build, test, and race a 15-centimere scale model car.

At the World Finals, teams present their cars, pit displays, portfolios and verbal presentations to judges. The final score is based on the points they receive from all the elements.

“Some of our kids are absolute (F1) fans,” he said. “And some of them just love STEM, love engineering, tinkering, love creating, innovating, or love organizing projects or whatever their role might be, they just had some passion for some part of it.”

To get to the world competition, the team had to place high in regional and national events.

The six STS students on the team were proud to represent Canada. The other team being from a school in Montreal.

“The fact that it’s so new here and we were only one of two teams to even go (from Canada),” said Manya Arora, STS Grade 12 student and project manager.

“I think we tried our best to show that nationalism with us and the patriotism, because we always had Canadian flags, it was all over our display and anytime someone asked us, we really happily told them ‘yeah, we’re from Canada’ and they want to ask us all about it so I think there was a lot of national pride in going there and representing our country.”

Grade 12 student Weston Fremont, the team’s resource manager and performance director, enjoyed meeting students from other schools around the world and seeing their car designs.

“The one that I found actually really cool was, you know how golf balls have dimples in them,” he said.

“One team from Brazil did basically just that on the back of the car and I obviously I didn’t see the CFD aerodynamics that came from that, but they claimed that it made it more aerodynamic.”

Fremont says he and the others on the team learned a lot in the 14 months leading up to the worlds that they can use in university.

“A lot of the skills that I learned doing this, like how to think, how to develop ideas, how to take something from an idea to physical execute a product, I think that that’s a very valuable thing that I’ll be able to take with me and use,” he said.

“Going into university and my career after that.”

Sofia Doherty, Grade 12 student and marketing manager grew up watching Formula 1 and enjoyed touring the Singapore Grand Prix paddock and meeting some of the team members.

She likes how the sport is including more women today and would like to be one of them.

“That would be a dream come true, I’ll say that much,” she said. “Yeah, I’m very impressed by the amount of women, I guess and the F1 Academy as well and just seeing that really evolve is just makes me proud.”

The top three teams with the most points were from schools in Australia, Germany and the U.K. and received their awards at the competition.

Unterschultz says the STS team doesn’t know their exact placing in the event.

“We just are receiving the results right now, the detailed results,” he said. “We haven’t even had a chance to debrief them.”

The six students on the team have taken it upon themselves to pay-it-forward and coach the next crop of Grade 11 students taking part in the program, sharing their experience to help them succeed.

More about the event is available online.