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The 2016 Welton Soapbox Derby – a review

7/20/2016

3 Comments

 
PictureThe 2016 Welton Soapbox Derby start line
On Saturday 9th July, Welton village hosted its annual soapbox derby. Since the event’s re-establishment in 2014, I have been every year. Once again it was great fun and worthy of a blog post. Reviews from prior years are also available (2014 - 2015), why not have a read of those as well. And I’ll try not to repeat myself too much in this one.

Last year’s event was a wet one and whilst the weather on the morning of the 9th had threatened nastiness, by lunchtime the grey clouds had moved on and the temperature had picked up.

The village was packed with visitors and there were around 40 soapboxes preparing to race. This year’s derby followed the format that has worked so well (and been described by me) before.

I wandered around with my camera taking photos and marvelling at the imagination and efforts that the teams had gone to in order to design and then build their vehicles. But I made a school boy error and inadvertently deleted all the photos before I had downloaded them. Doh!

So dear reader whilst I had planned to share some of my images, I’ll just have to share those of others (my thanks to Jerome Davies & Matt Stokes).

Of all, a red E-Type Jag was my favourite. But there was a great “Herbie” Beetle, an orange General Lee, a black Dodge Charger, a Boaty McBoatface narrow boat and a patriotically themed canon too (face first down the hill for this wacky racer).

The hill in Welton village is quite steep and after a good shove off from a driver’s crew mates, some impressive speeds are achievable on the descent. Radar detection was used to capture top speeds and pit the contestants against each other for the fastest run. Whilst I was at the event, the fastest run recorded was 31mph.

After registering a speed though, the drivers were challenged to make a series of turns, one of which was really rather tight (it separated the true lunatics from the plain nutters). You see too fast through the speed trap and some hard braking would be necessary. Those that went too easy on the brakes were liable to crash and indeed some spectacular accidents did occur (see the event Facebook page for proof).

A slower descent would get a lower top speed but make the tight left-hander easier to negotiate and potentially get a faster time for the entire run. Strategy and tactics were the key for the more competitive types, some of whom took it way too seriously. By way of illustration, I watched one team of adults swapping their wheels and tyres from knobblies to slicks to try and up the performance (of their already professionally engineered soapbox). I think this crew won in the end, though for me that didn’t mean much.

There were plenty of youngsters having a go and, from my perspective, they are the ones that deserve the most recognition and praise. The kids were brave and were having a good time – taking part was more important than winning.

On the subject of kids, I was accompanied to the derby by my daughter and my two nieces. They were buoyed by the excitement of the show for a little while before boredom set in and they wandered off to make their own entertainment. For the adults in the Baldwin party, that meant we ended up spending as much time trying to find the junior family members as we did actually watching the racing. And frustratingly when we found the kids, they were getting fractious and wanted to go home.

So I ended up leaving before I was ready and before the competition was over but a good time was had nonetheless and I am looking forward to next year. And in contemplating 2017, I have an idea – maybe more racers could take part by effectively hiring a seat. 

My thoughts are these:

On the 9th, I quite fancied having a go in a soapbox myself. But there was no real scope for me/anyone to do that unless they knew someone in a team.

As the derby is a fundraising event – maybe a soapbox or two could be available for hire for a single run (or a package of runs) with the money going to charity

Those wanting to hire a seat could register in advance like the other entrants and be allocated a time slot so that there was no nonsense on the day.

Photos care of Jerome Davies and Matt Stokes - click to enlarge

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2014 review - http://www.adrianbaldwin.net/blog/derring-do-danger-design-and-descent-at-derby
2015 review - http://www.adrianbaldwin.net/blog/the-2015-welton-soapbox-derby

Soapbox Derby Facebook Event Page 
3 Comments
Knut Hultmann
7/20/2016 03:41:31 pm

Adrian I think your idea about having rental soap boxes where the money goes to charity is a great idea. I would really like such an initiative and would love to have a go in one
Regards
Knut Hultmann

Reply
Jamie Blake
7/18/2017 10:20:27 pm

When I read this blog last year I found for some reason that it left me feeling annoyed as I was a member of the adult team you mentioned going to all the trouble of changing tyres as the day progressed from wet conditions to dry . Firstly I would like to correct you on your presumption that my cart was professionally engineered as it was built solely by myself in my shed over many months at quite considerable cost . Which leads me onto your other suggestion of hiring a ride in a cart for the day , I would suggest maybe you have a go at building your own cart like everyone else instead of moaning you couldn't just turn up and have a go and then maybe you would know why people who could be bothered to build their own aren't too keen to let strangers have all the fun of driving . All of our entry fees and money raised on the day does indeed go to help local charities so if you want to contribute feel free to go ahead and build a cart for your friends and your children and experience first hand what it is that motivates us to be competitive. Kind regards Jamie.

Reply
Adrian
7/19/2017 05:16:08 am

Hi Jamie,

Thanks for reading the post, getting in touch and taking the time to write your response. I thought I would reply on a few points.

To start, and by way of a compliment, your cart is excellent. I saw it was running last weekend (2017) as well. My view, not a presumption, is that it’s been professionally made and you are obviously skilled in terms of design, fabrication, welding and painting. I am not surprised that you have invested a lot of time and money – I also suspect that I’d be very envious of your shed.

I have written about the soapbox derby each year since 2014 and am not sure if you read the previous posts too. My view, previously expressed, about the adult teams, using the “professionally” built carts is that they should be judged separately from those less engineered or even comedic contraptions driven by kids – this year, Toothless the Dragon for example. Maybe there should be awards that are not just related to the speed trap or the overall course time – the people’s choice, the wackiest cart etc. Maybe there should be league tables by class of soapbox.

This year, for me, the best soapboxes were the White Horse pub and the Star Wars X-Wing fighter. For me the creativity was just fantastic.

I totally get your need to go fast, be the fastest, get the adrenaline pumping and know that your hard work on the cart has paid off. Speed is good. But if all the soapboxes were so well fabricated, driven by serious, highly competitive, race suited, helmeted adults, the derby just wouldn’t be so much fun for the visitors.

I have reflected further on my comments about hiring carts to ride. It was just an idea and maybe not completely thought through, certainly you wouldn’t want to let unprepared visitors loose in a cart like yours that will top 30mph – that could be a recipe for all sorts of danger. But you can bowl up to a go-kart track and drive one without having built it yourself and therein lies the idea. A go-kart is typically restricted and the choice of “hire vehicle” could be restricted in performance terms too. I wasn’t moaning at all, my bigger picture thinking is that more people might end up building their own ride once they had experienced the thrill of the descent. But I could be wrong.

To wrap, I love the derby, I applaud the organisers and the racers too. I think that the descent requires participants to be brave and all that run the course deserve a medal of sorts. If I upset you, I apologise, it wasn’t my intention.

Adrian

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