Friday night was our Elder's Quorum Pinewood Derby. I was in charge of organizing and promoting the event. I think we ended up with about 8 cars in the stock class, and 5 for the modified. Most of the modified car makers also made stock class cars, so we had about 12 participants overall.
We saw all kinds of shapes and colors, and almost everyone was using a different lubricant for their wheels. I chose the standard powdered graphite.
Mine is the green race car in the middle next to the car with the chicken broth strapped on top. I bought a pre-cut car from Robert's Craft store for about $8, sanded, and painted it with the only color of spray paint we had.
We used a point system and did 3 heats of three cars each. First place got 3 points, Second place 2 points, third place three points and raced so that everyone got three races. We then seeded the teams 1-8 according to their points. I ended up with the 5th seed.
From there, we did a bracket style elmination tournament matching up two cars at a time for a best of three races winner. My car was the only lower seeded vehicle to win one race, but unfortunately, we did not allow any lubricating between the races and my car fizzled and lost in a very narrow rubber match.
We had trophies for the winners. Ribbons for the modified class winners. And we did certificates for every participant. The modified class got a little intense because the makers had worked a lot harder to build their vehicles and there weren't really any rules. All ended well, but it got a little tense.
Fun time all around. I think we'll try again next year and hope to get more participants.
