For the first time in history, an all-female racing team competed at the Formula Hybrid competition.

The Democrat and Chronicle reports that the Rochester Institute of Technology’s all-female electric vehicle team, Hot Wheelz, recently came in third place in the electrical division at the competition, held at Dartmouth College’s Thayer School of Engineering. The young women completely built the single-seat electric car from scratch and entered it into the racing competition.

“This program is unique,” said Jodi Carville, Senior Director of College Alumni Relations at RIT and Adviser for Hot Wheelz, “because it’s an all-female team… What we do, whether we have a car that races, or we don’t have a car that races, because we’re unique as an all-female team, we’re going to get the attention.”

In 2012, when Carville was the director of Women in Engineering, RIT President Bill Destler added an electric vehicle dragster to race in the school’s creativity and innovation festival, Imagine RIT. Female engineering students, who went on to form Hot Wheelz, built a hot-pink car that won the electric dragster race; the dragster went 100 meters in under six seconds.

After a few more campus races, the team decided to enter national competitions. Hot Wheels spent over a year recruiting nearly 40 female engineers, as well as conducting training and fundraising in the meantime.

Third place was a great accomplishment for first time participants, but the RIT students also placed first in overall project management. They were also awarded with the GM Spirit of Formula Hybrid Award and the Fiat Chrysler Automobiles Gracious Professionalism Award.

The attention the all-female racing team is garnering for the school isn’t just good publicity. Currently, women only hold around 25% of all jobs in the male-dominated automotive industry.

Maura Chmielowiec, Hot Wheelz chief engineer, graduated in May with a BS/MS degree in mechanical engineering. She accepted a full-time position at General Motors in Detroit as a tire, wheel, and fastener performance test engineer. There are Chevy vehicles on the road in two-thirds of the world, and Chmielowiec is going to be a major part of that production. Her mentor is going to be Alba Colon, GM program manager and lead engineer for Chevy Racing.

Many more Hot Wheelz members have earned cooperative-education internships and full-time jobs in engineering and automotive industries since the team’s formation.

“I hope they understand how big of an accomplishment it is just getting to that competition,” said Alba Colon, program manager at GM and lead engineer for Chevy Racing who plans on mentoring Chmielowiec. “Little girls are going to say, ‘One day I want to do that. I want to be like them.’ What they are doing is a big deal.”