This year's Shell Eco-Marathon was held over this past weekend, and the winner in the top "prototype" category was a bunch of Canadian students. At first, that might seem surprising, but as it turns out, the students from Laval University won last year, so they seem to be the team to beat.

The Shell Eco-Marathon is right up our alley here at Autopia. It's got everything we love: Cars, technology, hi-level geekery, racing – what's not to love? And the numbers the competitor's return are just mind blowing. We've covered it in the past, and were looking forward to this year's races to see who would come out on top.

Turns out that in 2010, it was the same team that won in 2009: A student team from Laval University in Canada. They brought home the gold in the prototype category from the race in Houston, Texas with a winning miles per gallon figure of 2,487.5 mpg. The Laval University team's car used an Alerion Supermileage combustion engine to accomplish the feat. Interestingly, they were unable to match the MPG figures they set last year, a staggering 2,757.1 mpg.

Although it's really a race (of sorts) Shell calls their Eco-Marathon "an educational competition". The whole point is to challenge teams of high school and college students from around the world to design and build very efficient vehicles. The winners are the teams who can go the farthest distance on the least amount of fuel. There are annual Eco-Marathon events in the Americas, Europe and Asia.

Other class winners in the Prototype category included the team from Cicero North Syracuse High School in Cicero, New York, that won with a fuel-cell vehicle named the Clean Green Machine that returned the equivalent of 780.9 mpg. The Purdue University Solar Racing Team with its Pulsar vehicle returned an equivalent of 4,548 mpg.

The winner in the UrbanConcept category was a team from Mater Dei High School in Evansville, Indiana. They took also the grand prize for the second year in a row returning with Miles per gallon figures of 437.2 mpg in a car named George.