Perfect Weather for Soap Box Derby

Today was perfect weather for Soap Box Derby racing!

Starting time was the normal 7:30 at Bush's Pasture Park in Salem (next door to Willamette University). We arrived and set up the car like normal, except that I never found the Slick 50 One Lube that I was looking for, so today I used Tri-Flow.

All four of the racers from yesterday were back today; Sierra Smith's dad took her car apart last night while we were swimming and made some steering adjustments. In addition, there were a couple surprise contestants when the McClarans arrived at the last minute.

Tucker McClaran has been to the Akron, Ohio championships twice in the stock division. Last year, she placed 8^th in the world. Because of this, her car can never go back to the championships, and she cannot race the stock division; she now races the super stock division. Aubrey McClaran is Tucker's younger sister; Aubrey nearly crashed at the June Local Championship (see here), and has been very nervous to get back in the car. Aubrey's father has been working with her, and worked quite a bit with her at the empty Salem track last weekend while we were racing in Mount Vernon. Aubrey is back in the saddle, and was racing Tucker's old Stock car. Never mind that the car cannot go to Akron – this is an NDR race, so we are not racing for AASBD points toward Akron, anyway. Tucker was planning to race her Super Stock, but found that there were not enough Super Stock cars for a race – Tucker borrowed a club car and raced Stock. Again, she was able to do this because this was not an AASBD race.

As with our normal incredible luck, we were drawn to race the first phase against (you guessed it) Tucker McClaren. The last time Tucker was in a Stock car, in July, was when she placed 8^th in the World Championship. Tucker double-phased us – she beat Alex in both phases – the total time was something like 0.5 seconds. For his second heat, Alex went up against Sierra Smith. Again, we were double-phased, but not nearly as bad. This loss put Alex into a runoff for 5^th and 6^th place. In the runoff, Alex beat Aubrey Tucker with a double-phase, to take 5th place for the day.

Despite the results, I thought Alex's driving today was better than yesterday. He is keeping the car straight, and today he stayed at least on the centerline of the track going down the hill. (Yesterday, he was moving to the INSIDE . . . which is the WRONG side to be on). He still has a tendency to wobble around the track near the finish line, but from talking to Alex and a few of the other dads about that, I have a few things I can try to help him out. The steering in these cars is not self-centering like in an automobile. Because Alex likes the steering tight (very responsive to small inputs), I have also made the steering stiff (it takes a lot of force to turn); he is having trouble making very fine adjustments needed at high speed near the end of the track. I need to find the fine line between tight steering and stiff steering.

After the race, I removed most of the weights. Because we do not have a race next weekend, I have agreed to take the car to school for him so he can show-and-tell the class all about Soap Box Derby – I want the weights out so I can load and unload the car myself.