It's been called the "gravity grand prix" but to the youngsters who participate, it's just the soap box derby. The derby, which since its inception in August 1933 has drawn more than one million participants, brings together children and their homemade downhill-gravity-powered engineless racers for chances at prizes and for recognition among other like-minded racers. The first event is reported to have drawn a crowd of 362 children who showed up with homemade cars built of orange crates, sheet tin, wagon and baby-buggy wheels and almost everything of "junk value." No doubt one was actually made from a soap box, although there is no record of such a creation. From the Cub Scout Pinewood Derby with its five inch pinewood racers to the soap box derby, 15-year old John O'Connor III has racing in his veins and in the past three years, that love of cars has brought him fun and prizes and grand championship recognition. The Brockport youth and his father, also John, worked together and built a super stock car. The elder O'Connor said the car is built from a kit. "In the beginning our car was just a shell, we couldn't even paint it - that was in the stock division," he said. "This past year, John went up to the super stock class where we could buy the kit and put a nice paint job on it." This year, with his freshly painted racer, John brought home the world championship title in the super stock rally division in the American Soap Box Derby competition. In 2003, he won the national championship, scoring a record breaking 231 points. In 2002, John's first year of competition saw him finish first in the District 8 competition. "You accumulate points by the number of shows you attend and where you place," O'Connor said. Racers have three classes to choose from when entering the soap box derby arena. In the stock division, the car and driver together can weigh no more than 200 pounds; in super stock the driver and car can have a combined total weight of 230 pounds, and in the rally division the combined weight is 255 pounds. O'Connor said that when his son, John, wanted to get into the soap box derby competition, he knew it would be a big time and money commitment for the family, but that the sacrifices and drawbacks were worth the reward. "John had to make a decision to either race or go on the school's eighth grade field trip to Washington, D.C.," his father said. "He made the decision to skip the field trip and at the rally in Akron, Ohio he won. Akron is a very tough track to race so it was a thrill." Because the soap box "vehicles" are all gravity driven, winning a race is a matter of knowing which side of the track to be on in order to build up speed. "The fastest I've ever heard of the cars going is 30 miles an hour," John said. The car that O'Connor won with at the derby, according to the regulations, can never compete in the same division. "Of all of the 500 cars that were there - win or lose - they can never race there again," he said. For the two O'Connors, the trips have been great opportunities to spend quality time together. "We spent 31,000 miles on the road together last year traveling to and from races and it was great time spent," the elder O'Connor said. "It's been a great experience and I wouldn't have traded it for the world." "Well there was an X-box in the back of the car and sometimes my friends came along so the riding wasn't too bad," John said. "Plus I made a lot of friends with kids from around the United States." John's mother, Cynthia, and his sister, Khristina, have sometimes attended rallies but his sister was involved in her own school events so finding the time to get away was sometimes difficult. Information on the America Soap Box Derby can be found at www.aasbd.org. |
