Cans make a difference

Racing track, speeding cars and enthusiastic audience cheering for their favourite teams – Delhiites recently witnessed it all. Only that the cars, in miniature forms, were designed by engineering students out of disca­r­ded cans and being remote-controlled.

The stude­nts took the first step towards their F1(!) and motorsports dream by constructing their own remote controlled cars.

Twenty-seven teams from various colleges consisting two members each participated in Delhi Qualifiers of Red Bull Racing Can, demonstrating their designing and engineering talent at IIT campus. Each team was given four discarded cans to design the car and radio-controlled motors.

The participants’ feat and designing capabilities were judged by rally driver Gaurav Gill and Ashish Jha, assistant editor at AutoX.

The challenge was not only to be the first to cross the finish line but the racing cans with cool designs and steady machines also earned points.

Team ‘Armoured’ from USIT College, IP University, emerged as the fastest team, leaving behind rest of the contestants in all rounds.

Akshay Chauhan and Karman Singh of the team will go represent New Delhi in the national finals in October 2012 in Mumbai.

While the teams were sweating it out on the set course, fellow students and enthusiasts gathered around to cheer their favourites.

The foot-long racing cans offered the crowd a rush of adrenaline and an excuse to come together to watch a friendly competition. The crowd and judges keenly watched the cans-turned-cars as all the teams had displayed them before the beginning of the race.

They applied the formula of ‘more the mass, more safely the object moves.’ “Our car was slightly heavier and that worked for us. We used four cans and it took us three hours to design the car,” said Akshay, a third-year student of Information Technology.

Past experience of participating in a similar even also gave them an edge. “We had participated in a similar race. So I think that helped us. We had an idea how much weight we should add to the car while designing it.

For the finals, we’ll make some improvements in the design,” said Karman Singh. In national finals at Mumbai, they will compete against winners from Pune, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad and Kolkata. The finalists will participate against 24 other nations at the Red Bull Racing Can World Finals in Brazil.