AFTER months of investigations, it came down to thousandths of a second for young engineers taking part in a Formula One challenge.

Pupils of Castle Park Primary School in Caldicot and The Dell Primary School in Chepstow have been testing their science, technology, engineering and maths skills in the Formula One in Schools competition.

They came together at Castle Park to test their designs against each other ahead of the regional finals in Swansea this week.

As well as designing the cars, the children also had to make a presentation to staff, parents and the other teams explaining learning and skills they had used to develop their vehicles.

One of the teams, at Castle Park, even managed to get sponsored T-shirts from local business A-Z Tyres.

The cars, powered by compressed air, raced on a 20-metre track with the P4CK team from The Dell recording the fastest time of 1.129 seconds – nearly 40mph – while the quickest from Castle Park was Daring Dragon with 1.168 seconds.

The event also gave the teams from the two schools the opportunity to learn more and to make tweaks to the cars ahead of the regional finals.