Carleton GNCTR

Founded in 1975, The Great Northern Concrete Toboggan Race (GNCTR) is the longest running engineering competition in Canada. Students design, build, and race toboggans with running surfaces made entirely of concrete. The toboggans are required to be under 300 lbs, have fully operational steering and braking systems, and a protective superstructure to ensure the safety of all 5 riders in the event of a collision at up to 65 km/h. Each year approximately 500 students representing 30 teams travel from across Canada to compete against their fellow engineers from different universities and technical institutions

Carleton University has been participating in the Great Northern Concrete Toboggan Race for over 20 years and has seen tremendous successes.  Carleton’s GNCTR team has a very unique composition compared to other schools.  Our team is typically 50% students from Carleton’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, with the other 50% of students coming from our Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering.

Every year, students who are passionate about the team and the competition volunteer many hours of their personal time to designing and fabricating the toboggan, technical display, and other competition elements starting as early as February, working until the competition at the end of January in the following year.