Over the weekend a team of engineering students from CPUT, Cape Speed, were the first from SA to take part in Formula Student. The annual race is known as Europe’s most established educational motorsport competition and is run by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.
The team’s challenge was to produce a prototype car that was raced against 110 other teams from around the world at Silverstone in the UK.
To rally support for team Cape Speed, a real-time Scalextric race track, an exact replica of the UK’s Silverstone race track, was built by Saatchi & Saatchi AtPlay and is powered via social networks – tweets or Facebook likes.
Alan Cronje, creative group head at AtPlay explains how it works: “Each Facebook like or message of support with #capespeed powers the car around the miniature live Silverstone track. The mechanic used is custom built software with a server on the track, which allows the #capespeed hash tag or Facebook ‘like’ to power the lap and the car to continue moving.â€
The 300-piece track, 16 metres long and 12 square metres when instituted, was set up at Canal Walk over the weekend so people could see their car racing in real life.
If people couldn’t get to the real life track they could watch their lap via the live streaming video on the Cape Speed website.
The second phase will allow people to program their very own lap times and compete against each other. Check it out at www.capespeed.co.za
2 Comments
Wow! this is gay
hey beee, dont be like that.
nice work by Atplay, keep it up guys.