H2 Grand Prix Sprint: when your school's maker lab becomes a world competitive advantage

Imagine receiving a kit with everything you need to make a car run at high speed — powered only by water. No gasoline. No lithium batteries. Just water that, through electrolysis, becomes hydrogen to feed a fuel cell that propels the vehicle along a 10-meter track. That is the starting point of the H2 Grand Prix Sprint: an educational program created by Horizon Educational that turns the renewable energy classroom into a laboratory for engineering, digital fabrication, and international competition.

But the program does not stop at building the car that comes in the box. The real challenge of H2GP Sprint begins when students ask: how do we make it go faster? That question opens the door to a real engineering cycle: design, prototyping, testing and improvement. And when the track records times and automatically uploads them to a world ranking, what started as a classroom activity becomes a global challenge — without needing to travel anywhere.

The kit: all you need is water

The H2GP Sprint Car Kit (RESK-03-1) is a 1:20 scale racing car powered by a proton exchange membrane (PEM) hydrogen fuel cell. The propulsion system works like this: the Hydrofill station electrolyzes tap water to produce pure hydrogen, which is stored in a small HYDROSTIK cartridge; that cartridge feeds the car's fuel cell, which converts hydrogen into electricity to drive the motor. The only byproduct of the cell is water vapor. Zero emissions.

The kit includes all the parts and is ready to assemble and race: students build it themselves, and that assembly is already the first engineering experience. Once assembled, the car is ready to compete. Unlike conventional demonstration experiments, the H2GP Sprint is explicitly designed to be modified. The chassis, body, drivetrain components and mass distribution are all variables that students can intervene in. The challenge is not just understanding how hydrogen works — it is applying that knowledge to win.

Engineering at the limit: three levers to go faster

The H2GP Sprint has no single path to victory. Teams can intervene in the car in three main dimensions, and finding the optimal combination of the three is the engineering problem each team must solve:

These are not simulations. They are engineering decisions with measurable consequences: the track timer does not lie. Every team hypothesis becomes a test, and every test becomes data. That is how students develop the engineering mindset that no textbook can replace.

Maker labs enter the picture: from 3D files to the track

This is where H2GP Sprint becomes something truly different. Horizon Educational provides the 3D model files of the kit to participating teams. This means students are not limited to the components that come in the box: they can design, print and test their own parts using the digital fabrication infrastructure their school already has.

A new aerodynamic body designed in CAD and 3D-printed. A lighter fuel cell mount cut from wood with a CNC router. A side deflector made with low-density filament to reduce weight without sacrificing rigidity. The school's digital fabrication lab — what many institutions call a maker lab or fab lab — goes from being an underused resource to being the team's engineering workshop.

This integration between the H2GP Sprint program and the school maker lab is one of the most powerful dimensions of the project. It turns the hydrogen competition into the perfect reason to activate all the digital fabrication resources that many schools already own but rarely use with such a concrete purpose: design parts, test them under competitive conditions and improve them based on real data.

CNC wood routers, resin printers, laser cutters, thermoforming equipment: each of these tools, often underused in the technology workshop, finds an immediate and motivating application in H2GP Sprint. There is no better way to teach digital fabrication than when the product is going to compete against teams from another continent.

The track that connects to the world: real-time ranking

The H2GP Sprint Competition Package (RESK-03-CP) competition track is not just a 10-meter lane. It is the interface between the team's engineering work and the world. The track records each race time with precision and automatically uploads it to the H2GP Sprint world ranking. The moment the car crosses the finish line, the result is visible to competitors in any country.

This radically transforms the nature of competition. A school in Santiago, Lima, Buenos Aires or Mexico City can participate in a truly global challenge without incurring the travel costs that an in-person international competition would require. The locality of the race does not limit the reach of the competition: what the track timer records at a technical high school in Biobío is immediately available to a team in Europe or Asia.

For students, seeing their position on a world ranking after each race has a motivational effect that no exam can replicate. The presence on that ranking is immediate, objective and public. That is exactly the kind of incentive that turns a school project into a team mission.

H2GP Sprint in action

The following video shows the H2GP Sprint in action: hydrogen cars racing on the 10-meter competition track, the race dynamics and the educational potential of the program.

The International H2 Grand Prix Sprint Championship

Horizon Educational organizes the International H2 Grand Prix Sprint Championship, where the top teams from the world ranking face off in the ultimate competition. The championship winner receives an H2GP Pro kit as a prize — the highest-tier system in the H2GP ecosystem, designed for high-performance educational programs.

Chile participated in the first international H2GP Sprint competition in March 2026, consolidating its presence in the program at the global level. This participation positions Chile as the only country in Latin America with active teams competing in the program's official world ranking. For Chilean teams — the vast majority from technical-vocational high schools — reaching that international ranking is an achievement that goes beyond school and has a real impact on their educational and professional trajectories.

The goal for coming years is clear: add more Chilean teams to the ranking, and expand the program to new Latin American countries. The first participation is the proof of concept. What comes now is scaling up.

Districalc: official Horizon distributor in Latin America

Districalc is the official distributor of Horizon Educational in Latin America, with a presence in more than 20 countries in the region since 1981. This means that schools, technical high schools and universities in Latin America that want to implement the H2GP Sprint program have in Districalc a local partner that not only supplies the kit, but also accompanies the pedagogical integration process, trains teachers and facilitates participation in the world ranking.

The H2GP Sprint Competition Package (RESK-03-CP) includes everything a school needs to host its first competition: 12 scale hydrogen cars, the 10-meter competition track, the Hydrofill station and all accessories. For institutions that want to start with smaller groups or in an exploratory way, the H2GP Sprint Classroom Pack (RESK-03) and the individual H2GP Sprint Car Kit (RESK-03-1) are the ideal entry points.

If your institution already has a 3D printer, a laser cutter or a digital fabrication workshop, H2GP Sprint can turn that equipment into the engine of a world-class educational experience. And if you are thinking about how to activate your school's maker lab with a project that combines renewable energy, applied engineering and international competition — this is exactly the opportunity you are looking for.