Teams from Strathfield South High, St Paul's Catholic College and Casula Public declared champions at regional qualifying event hosted by UNSW Sydney.
A trio of schools were celebrating success after UNSW hosted the 2025 Sunsprint competition.
But more than 500 students from across NSW and ACT had great fun while working in teams to build and race small-scale solar-powered vehicles.
The competition aims to deliver a first-hand educational experience to students in the areas of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), with an emphasis on design, engineering and renewable energy.
The event, open to both primary and high school students, is designed to expand learning and provide a practical experience in designing and building functioning solar-powered vehicles. It also focuses on helping students recognise the importance of renewable energy for a sustainable future.
In the National 100m event, where vehicles have certain size and power restrictions, the winning team came from Strathfield South High School with their car Silent Orbit.
This event is raced on a 100m figure-of-eight track with cars built to the Australian-International Model Solar Challenge specifications.
Cars are usually built by teams of up to four students and can take up to six months to design and build.
A team from All Saints Grammar in Belmore was second, with Strathfield South also taking third. All three teams, plus two wildcards, will be invited to compete at the National competition in Victoria in December, which will also feature international teams from Taiwan.
Elsewhere, St Paul's Catholic College took the honours in the Open event where speed is the only factor over two laps of the track – with no restrictions on the size or power of the cars. Indeed, the trick for success in this event is often to ensure your car does not fly off the track when going too fast!
Meanwhile, Casula Public School with car Venusaur was the winner in the SPREE 100m event. This challenges students to build a solar-powered utility vehicle which is judged not just on speed, but also on aesthetics and the level of engineering required as well.
The annual event has been organised by Michael Richards and Professor Ziv Hameiri from UNSW's School of Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering, with the support of the Faculty of Engineering.
"The objective of the event is to encourage students to engage their imagination," said Michael.
"We hope it gives them all direct learning opportunities and helps to embrace the challenge of building the best solar-powered vehicle possible.
"It's really fulfilling to run an event where so many enthusiastic young engineers work together to solve problems in such amazing ways."
As well as the SunSprint events, there were also challenges to build sprint cars from kit materials, which race on a 20m straight track.
Solar-powered boats were also on display, with both primary and secondary school children racing in a special 10m pool, using fishing line for steering.
While a solar pursuit competition was held, where student-designed cars chased each other around a single large oval track until one of the cars was able to catch up and touch its opponent.
"It was an outstanding event, and we hope to see many of these talented kids very soon at UNSW, helping us make this planet a better place," said Prof. Hameiri.
