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Rapp's soap box derby drivers ready to roll Saturday
With Rappahannock County fielding an all-time high 13 racers this year, up from zero just two years ago, the Soap Box Derby of Culpeper will be taking a big step forward with this Saturday's race.
A jump in the number of racers from 128 to 153 this year means the event becomes the biggest soap box derby in the world, surpassing the 151 who recently raced in Fredericksburg.
But it will also be losing Carol Anne Brown, a former Culpeper resident who drove in the event and also founded the derby's junior competition committee. The 18-year-old committed suicide this past Easter and this year's race is being run in her memory, with the trophy for sportsmanship, which Brown had won, being renamed in her honor.
“We've lost her, but we're keeping her memory alive,” said race director Frankie Gilmore. ”She was an amazing young lady, and if by doing that, we can save another child from depression or bipolarism, it will help.”
“It's hard for us,” said derby committee member Thom Pellikaan. “We loved her.”
The derby that Brown had been with since its inception in 2003 has grown from 35 drivers to 153 in just six years, with Culpeper County this year having the greatest chance, numbers-wise, of sending a racer to the All-American Soap Box Derby World Championships in Akron on July 25.
One of the Rappahannock County drivers is 11-year-old Shane O'Heir who lives locally in Boston and is racing a car for The Inn at Little Washington, where his father, Neil, works.
“It's really fun just going down in the car and stuff like that,” said Shane last Saturday as his car was being prepared for inspection.
Shane was eliminated in the first round last year, his first in the derby, but this year there will be a competition within the competition, as Shane's older brother, Michael, is making his debut in the race. Both are students at Wakefield Country Day School in Flint Hill but not a whole lot of study is required to make a go of it at this race.
“It's basically screwing nuts in – it's not that hard,” said Michael of the car kits, which currently run upwards of $430 on the All-American Soap Box Derby Web site. “And they have clinics, so anything you're having a problem with, they can come and help you.”
For area drivers, the racing season began on Feb. 22 with a clinic hosted by the Rosson and Troillo Motor Company, which has locations in Culpeper and Fauquier counties. Since then, the racers have had four clinics, a spring rally race, a trial run (for first-time drivers), and last weekend's inspection to get their gravity-powered cars ready for the derby's 650-foot course.
This is no small matter, with 13-year-old Wilton Blakely being stripped of his 2003 world championship title when it was discovered in a post-race inspection that his car's kingpin, which holds the axle in place in the rear of the car, was glued to the floor to increase stability instead of being placed through a pre-drilled hole on the axle. Usually, inspections are much less dramatic, according to Paul Bates, Sr., of Culpeper, who is on the Culpeper Soap Box Derby's committee.
“The most common thing I find is a washer in the wrong place or something like that nothing major,” said Bates. “All the cars look the same and have the same parts.” Not only that, the competitors race two at a time on the same wheels, swapping each other's wheels for a second race that also figures into the final finishing time.
The cars definitely looked the same after last weekend's inspection, as they were covered up in a white sheet and stored until race day in a location that Gilmore asked not to be identified, an appropriate enough request given that the storage room looked like Hangar 18 after the fabled Roswell UFO crash.
One of those alien bodies, er, cars belongs to 10-year-old Culpeper resident Richard Fellows, who was actually lucky to survive long enough for inspection. “When I took the car apart and took the bolt out,” he said, “the spring went flying into the air, so I just ducked and covered.”
Then there was the trickiness of getting the car to handle properly. “I had a problem with the steering, because the way the cable was, when the wheels were straight, the handles weren't straight.”
Which is why his younger brother, R.J., might not be following in his brother's footsteps next year when he becomes eligible to race. “It looks scary,” he said.
The race starts at 7 a.m. at the track on Blue Ridge Avenue in Culpeper, in front of Yowell Park, with racers ranging in age from 8 to 17 and competing in stock, super stock and masters division. For more information, visit culpepersoapboxderby.com .
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