Stissing High School students show off their homemade racecar

PINE PLAINS — High school students showed off their engineering skills Saturday, May 9, showcasing a Mark 5 Shelby Cobra they built over the course of the school year.

The car was the end product of Pine Plains High School students’ participation in the Winner’s Circle Project. It’s the school’s first time as part of the yearly project, which began in 2019 as a way for high schoolers to get hands-on experience in STEM.

A shipment of parts and a fiber glass body was delivered to the school in September. Since then, a team of 25 students helped to build the car under the supervision of Jim Benincasa, a former math teacher at the school. A total of 17 of them are responsible for the build, while eight others handle marketing and graphic design under the direction of humanities teacher Jennifer Blackburn.

“I thought there was no way we would do this kind of program,” Benincasa said. “And a week later the principal came and said, ‘Do you want to do this?’”

Over the course of the class, the students had the opportunity to tour some professional racing labs: Factory Five in Massachusetts — which manufactures build-it-yourself component car kits — and Dyson Racing Team’s headquarters in Poughkeepsie among them.

“It helped me think about what I want to do in the future,” said Eben Dedrick, one of the participating students. “Now, I want to go into mechanical engineering. I worked on getting the pedals adjusted, and tuning the car — getting the wheels in the right spot.”

“A lot of classes in our school aren’t very hands-on,” said Alexa North, a student who worked on the marketing side. “This felt a lot closer to what I’m actually going to do.”

Her fellow marketer Carol Jiminez agrees. “When we tell people about it, everyone says, ‘I wish I had a class like that in high school.”

Local businesses got in on the act, too. Pine Plains Auto Body visited the school to help out with the car’s body work. Wheels of Time, a local vintage restoration auto company, lent a hand with the interiors. “I was blown away by the support,” Benincasa said. “And the kids are really into it too.”

The rubber meets the road next week: on May 19, Stissing High’s Cobra will travel to Lime Rock, where a professional driver will take the car through its paces. A few days later on May 22, the Cobra will compete against six other area schools participating in the Winner’s Circle Project. The cars will be judged by Dyson Racing pros in performance, marketing, and overall design.