{"id":62846,"date":"2026-05-10T00:11:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-10T00:11:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/62846\/"},"modified":"2026-05-10T00:11:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-10T00:11:15","slug":"steel-city-students-to-compete-in-hydrogen-racing-world-title-in-switzerland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/62846\/","title":{"rendered":"Steel City students to compete in hydrogen racing world title in Switzerland"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Steel City was heralded as the Hydrogen Hub before the Whyalla Steelworks was forced into administration.<\/p>\n

But now a group of high school students are taking Whyalla’s hydrogen potential to the world stage.<\/p>\n

For 17-year-old aspiring engineer Simon Coppins, it is a chance to see two years of “blood, sweat and tears” pay off.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Lead racer Simon Coppins aspires to be an engineer. (Supplied: Simon Coppins)<\/p>\n

The H2 Grand Prix tasks competitors with building a hydrogen-powered RC car and completing the greatest number of laps in four hours.<\/p>\n

According to team manager Caelan Kaminski, consistent lap times are the key to success.<\/p>\n

“It’s always about pacing yourself. We don’t want to be the fastest car out there, because the fastest cars always run out of fuel the quickest,” he said.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Team manager Caelan Kaminski.\u00a0 (ABC News: Arj Ganesan)<\/p>\n

At the South Australian world qualifying event in 2025, the team was in first place by a heavy margin, but 30 minutes before the end, they were disqualified over a technical fault.<\/p>\n

For lead driver Simon and his team, which had spent hundreds of hours perfecting their car, the outcome was heartbreaking.<\/p>\n

\"Three<\/p>\n

The Whyalla team has spent hours building and working on its cars. (ABC News: Arj Ganesan)<\/p>\n

“I just spent three hours and 30 minutes driving without blinking,” he said.<\/p>\n

“We were so close to our end goal.”<\/p>\n

According to race officials, the mistake came down to a simple misunderstanding, with the team swapping out one of its batteries during a mandatory maintenance check.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

The RC cars are fuelled by hydrogen that the team produces.\u00a0 (ABC News: Arj Ganesan)<\/p>\n

The team, which had established a dominating lead, did not need to make the switch and had they not done so, would have taken out first place.<\/p>\n

Though they missed out on competing in Germany in 2025, fortune has given them another shot this year.<\/p>\n

The race changed its scheduling format, hosting its world competition earlier in the year to better align with the northern hemisphere’s calendar.<\/p>\n

Going forward, qualifying events for countries in the Asia Pacific will be held the year before.<\/p>\n

But as this decision was only made recently, qualifiers for the Switzerland competition could not be held in Australia.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Eli Coppins, Caelan Kaminski, Simon Coppins, Shannon Bayogos and Karman Randhawa practise ahead of their race in Switzerland.\u00a0 (ABC News: Arj Ganesan)<\/p>\n

According to the organisers, several high-performing teams have subsequently been invited to the June meet, including Whyalla, as the team came so close to victory in 2025.<\/p>\n

“It’s definitely a big opportunity for all of us to prove Whyalla’s worth and, you know, Whyalla’s skills and community on a world stage,” Caelan said.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

The students have spent hours tinkering with their model cars to get them race ready. (ABC News: Arj Ganesan)<\/p>\n

Sunrise Christian School science, technology, engineering, and mathematics teacher Trudi Wynn could not be prouder of how her students acted.<\/p>\n

“They were very, very gracious in the disqualification,” she said.<\/p>\n

“It was obviously very disappointing.<\/p>\n

“They were interacting with our sponsors and thanking them and apologising because they didn’t obviously win.<\/p>\n

“I think that they are an excellent representation of Whyalla.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Teacher Trudi Wynn praised the team for handling past setbacks with grace.\u00a0 (ABC News: Arj Ganesan)<\/p>\n

Ms Wynn said the competition was a fantastic tool to inspire students to study STEM.<\/p>\n

“This is why I’m a teacher,” she said.<\/p>\n

“My father was an inventor, so I’m very much into problem-solving and solving real-world problems and getting my students involved.”<\/p>\n

The team now needs to raise roughly $100,000 to cover the costs of return flights, accommodation, and equipment for the five students and five accompanying adults.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Steel City was heralded as the Hydrogen Hub before the Whyalla Steelworks was forced into administration. But…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":62847,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[811,17],"class_list":["post-62846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-switzerland","tag-hydrogen","tag-switzerland"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/116547386344939181","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62846\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}