Pupils at Eaglesfield Paddle Primary Academy got a taste of life in the fast lane this week.

The youngsters have been working with rally car firm M-Sport to create their own racing cars and testing them at the company's Dovenby headquarters.

The project involved three visits to M-Sport. They enjoyed a tour of the site and course and learned all about what goes into creating a winning car.

The 31 pupils then built and programmed Lego vehicles, using the iPad Mind Storm App, to go around a pre-designed course.

They were split into six teams and the competition was based on speed and accuracy over three runs of the course.

Only 0.3 seconds divided the teams in second, third and fourth place.

M-Sport business development manager Andrew Wheatley said: "It was great to see the enthusiasm and passion showed by all of the pupils.

"We’ve been pleasantly surprised with the level of their technical ability and programming.

"There could well be some budding engineers of the future among them."

The school's deputy head, Claire Fleming, said: "It’s been great to have this link with M-Sport and it has given the children a real purpose to their work with added motivation and excitement."

Year six pupil, Sam O’Connor, 11, said: "It’s been really fun. We learnt a lot about the rally cars too.

"We know that the rally cars have to be really light to go fast so we tried to take as much weight off our cars as we could.

"I think it would be a good job to have one day."