A ten-year-old hurtling round a race track at 50mph is not, at first glance, a great idea. But last Sunday, 65 teams of primary school-aged children climbed into their homemade cars and tore around the famous tarmac at Goodwood. Organised by West Sussex-based company Greenpower, the cars, known as Goblins, are powered by two 12-volt batteries and a wheelchair motor. The idea is to spark an interest in technology and inspire a new generation of sustainably-minded engineers.

Emma Tyler from Greenpower says: “Our main objective is to introduce practical engineering to young people before they make some of the major subject choices in their school careers. The Goblin kits all the teams have built involve the use of basic hand tools, an introduction to electric circuits, lessons on drag and aerodynamics and the creative side of designing body work to personalise the car.”

The promise of a day’s racing keeps students absorbed in their projects, with the best drivers out of 400 making it through gruelling trials of slalom, timed laps, drag racing and squeezing through smaller and smaller spaces, to win a much coveted full lap around the historic Goodwood circuit.

While the Goblins are kit cars for Years Five to Six (ages ten to 12), bought from Greenpower and built to their exacting specifications, Formula 24 is the secondary school version, designed by students with the help of teachers, engineers and volunteers.

Body parts are made from recycled materials “scrounged” from schools or the bins of local companies.

Steve Wallis is a car mechanic from Barnham in West Sussex who has been volunteering with Greenpower in schools and at the races for ten years. He says: “When I started the cars were averaging eight miles an hour. Last year, some were doing over 50.

“This year we’ve had to cut the battery size because we can’t make the cars safe enough to be doing those kind of speeds. The children are using the same motors they’ve always used. It’s all been achieved through aerodynamics and class of build. You should see some of them – they look like F1 cars.”

The popularity of the programme is undeniable, with heats throughout the year packed with entrants, some schools in East and West Sussex fielding a number of teams and even a visiting team from Poland attending the opener in April this year.

Despite this, Steve wishes it was more popular still.

“The kids love it,” he says. “And it’s a great thing for them. We had a race on Littlehampton seafront, with primary school children in their kit cars. We were there all day and people kept coming up to say ‘We didn’t know this was on’. It’s a shame it isn’t known about in more schools.”

So does the project do what it set out to do and encourage people into engineering? Steve began volunteering when his son was at secondary school. Together they won the national two years in a row. That was ten years ago. This year, Wallis junior graduated from a masters course in aeronautical engineering.

* Race results and information visit www.greenpower.co.uk.