Jordan helped youngsters get an insight into competitive race car engineering on 14th June, with the Stowe School entry into this year's "Formula Schools" event.

"Formula Schools" was devised six years ago by the Oxfordshire Motorsport task force in order to help raise the profile of engineering in schools.  Each participating school is given a nominal donation towards building a car, but the responsibility of finding the required funding and engineering assistance (through local and national companies' sponsorship) to build a competitive racing model is up to the school itself.

This year Jordan agreed to a proposal presented by Buckingham's Stowe School, which is a neighbour of the team’s Silverstone factory, and gave the school expert assistance in the design and manufacture of its model.
 
The Stowe School team had the basic parts, but lacked expertise in body design and composite component process, which is where Jordan was able to help.  Stowe pupils attended Jordan's wind tunnel in Brackley to undertake supervised making of patterns, moulds and finally composite bodywork for the model.

While Jordan staff helped Stowe to manage a number of engineering hurdles, to ensure the engine and other parts were correctly packaged, the team from Stowe did all the work themselves and the end result was quite impressive.

The proof was on the track, however, and the final step was entering the car into the Silverstone Formula Schools race, which has grown from 5 schools entering the first race in 1997 to 63 schools and 5000 pupils at the track this year.  After looking promising all through the project, unfortunately Stowe’s car didn't have a chance to perform as it ran into the bridge during the warm up laps, breaking the drive shaft.

Graham Sprowell, Jordan’s Aerodynamics General Manager, nevertheless thought it was a great experience:  "Formula Schools is a very good idea and successfully does what it aims at, which is to give students an insight into competitive engineering at a very high level."