Two return trips to Leeds. That's how far an Eco-Marathon car designed and built by students and Design and Technology technical staff from Dyffryn Taf School, Whitland, will go on one gallon of fuel!

The two students and technical staff linked up with aerospace engineers from Cranfield University to design, build and compete at the 2013 UK Eco-Marathon for Schools held at Mallory Park motor racing circuit in Derbyshire last month.

This was the second year the school team had competed and they were hoping to beat their 2012 score of 570 MPG against a range of UK school and university teams.

The team from Dyffryn Taf set a goal of 1,000 MPG for the 2013 event. To achieve this target they redesigned the steering assembly, reduced rolling resistance in the wheel bearings and redesigned the body to reduce frontal area. The final area for improvement was the fitting of a fuel injection system from sponsors Ecotrons from the USA.

On the day, the car and team performed reliably, with some excellent runs resulting in the highest score of any school team of 859 MPG. The team also came third in the overall rankings with a 52 per cent improvement on last year's score.