A GROUP of talented young students are celebrating success in a national competition rewarding innovation and ingenious invention.

Four 14-year-old pupils at Hummersknott Academy, in Darlington, took home the prize for a Star Quality Pit Display, as part of the recent Land Rover 4x4 in Schools UK Finals.

The honour was given in recognition of their creativity and perfectly-presented pit booth explaining their design process for the prestigious competition.

Teams of 13 to 18-year-old students were invited to finals held this month in the British Motor Museum in Warwickshire.

Each team used software coding to design and build a remote-controlled scale model four-wheel-drive all-terrain vehicle capable of negotiating obstacles and road surfaces including water dips, a rope bridge, and rocks.

Across the two-day competition, Hummersknott's Traction team competed with their scale model over a bespoke track which led them over and around Land Rover Discovery SUVs and was designed to replicate the off-road challenges facing a full-size all-terrain vehicle.

Teams were scored on track performance and also presented their work and knowledge of vehicle design and engineering to a panel of judges.

All finalists were presented with an Industrial Cadets Silver Award for spending more 30 hours working on their project and have been invited to apply to the Jaguar Land Rover Apprenticeship programme in September 2020.

Chris Thorp, responsible business director at Jaguar Land Rover, said: “We are passionate about inspiring the next generation of engineering talent and the Land Rover 4x4 in Schools Technology Challenge is a vital part of our education programme.

"Digital skills are critical to our business and we need more talented software engineers to help us develop innovative technologies for our vehicles.

"I’m hugely impressed by the students and their vehicles and would like to congratulate all teams."

During the event, Jaguar Land Rover apprentices, graduates and engineers ran a career networking workshop for students and delivered a coding and technology masterclass to help teachers deliver the Land Rover 4x4 in Schools programme coding module and explain how these skills relate to digital engineering roles.

The team have been praised for their hard work by the school, their peers and parents.