Nov. 27, 2009
Racers use gravity and their own skill to test each other at Derby Park in Sanford last Saturday. The park gives young racers the chance to build their own car and race it, qualifying for national-level championships.
Photo courtesy of Central Florida Soap Box Derby
By Matt Morrison
Guest Reporter
Sanford's Derby Park is a little more restless on Nov. 21. At the foot of a gently rising hill, packs of child-sized rocket-shaped cars roll through a makeshift village of tents and trailers. A few yards away, a pickup hitched to a flatbed trailer waits to haul them to the top. In 30 seconds, they'll be 20 feet higher in altitude and ready for takeoff.
Under a canopy on the hilltop, drivers just old enough to ride their first bicycle contort their tiny bodies into the slippery fuselages of fiberglass and steel racecars, as parents aim them straight toward a wall 100 yards downhill.
Then the voice of Edna Brewer, a member of the Central Florida Soap Box Derby announcing the event, leaps out of dual loudspeakers and turns all eyes to the top of the hill. The soft pop of the metal bars holding the racers in place collapses, and the cars start to pour down the road, slowly at first but gaining speed, the drivers just small helmeted dots hunched forward in the center, their eyes poking a hair above the horizon.
They punch through the finish line, and Brewer measures the distance between the winning car's nose and the other's rear to the thousandth of a second. Then it's back to the top of the hill, where the racers will change tires, switch lanes and race again. The winner of both or the one with the largest time differential moves ahead in the brackets.
"Sometimes when you really want to win, it's heart-pounding," said Kirby Gagne of Winter Springs. At 16, Gagne is an old vet among rookies. Now in the Master's Division, he talks of retirement that's only a year away, just as he's becoming a senior in high school.
His name adorns the entrance to the park in honor of being a Rally Stock world champion in 2005. But on this Saturday, Gagne didn't win, the brakes failing to stop his car before it hit into the soft barricade of orange traffic cones. Gagne, though, seems to shake off the loss; a racer since the age of 10, he's seen them come and go.
"Everyone who comes here," he says, "we're all friends — just one big family."
Located in the center of the action, Central Florida Soap Box Derby's director Eric Griffin tries to manage all of the confusion. Griffin became fascinated with soap box racers at a young age and was a city champion for Albuquerque, N.M. in 1970. His son, Evan, was a world champion in 2002. Griffin said his favorite part of the sport is the family atmosphere.
"The family actually stays together and helps each other," he said.
Soap box racing isn't a spectator sport, with dad at the top of the hill helping to move the car into place and mom at the bottom taking the car aside and getting it ready to roll again.
It's a personal day for Griffin too. At one point he stands with his other son, Ben, back from Iraq with an up-armored Humvee. They're behind a mountain of toys to be donated to Toys for Tots. In lieu of race fees, participants were asked to pay an equivalent amount in toys.
Ben, like his dad, is a racer too, finally giving up the sport in 1999. "It's fun," he said.
Although he admits driving a Humvee is a little tougher.
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