If there was ever a place to show how colourful and creative we Indians can get, it was the first ever Red Bull Soap Box Derby. Held on a twisty course derived from the slopes of Mount Mary Road in Bandra Mumbai, the contest saw 57 participants steer their vehicles that were being propelled by the gravity.
Red Bull Soapbox Race is a unique non-motorised racing event, which challenges both experienced racers and amateurs alike. The task for the teams was to design and build imaginative, human-powered soapbox machines and compete against the clock in a downhill race course featuring jumps, bumps and curves.
The contestants were judged on creativity, race performance as well as a 20 second show that they had to put up before hitting the slopes. Satire, sleaze, futuristic, thought-provoking are just some of the words that we can use to describe the colourful riot of machines that greeted the audience during the race.
While some like team Banana Republic took inspiration from the movie Tron (they had full underbody neons) others like Team Smelly Socks began their machine as a shoe with, you guessed it, a smelly socks, but ultimately turned their soapbox racer into a mis-matched machine with bits from various vehicles.
Others crazy contraptions included Don’t Call me Cute’s snail shaped racer (an all-women’s team), team Star Wars who despite having Lord Vader on their side were defeated by the force and Team Death Racers who did a modern take on how Mummies would participate in the contest if they rose from the dead.
The contest was won by team Dabawallas. They were followed by team Tritech in second and Team Feni talks in third place. While the winners took their inspiration from Mumbai’s hardworking pioneers of food delivery, team Tritech ran a cart called flower power with aim of promoting the message of peace and love. Tritech who spent over 3-4 months designing their machine had a fully developed suspension system with brakes on the rear-wheels (maybe to allow a little mountain road drifting Japanese-style).
Team Feni, inspired by the popular Goan spirit, ran a bottle shaped machine and successfully navigated the slopes despite looking a bit unstable around the around the corners owing to the odd shape of their racer.
The contestants were judged by Judged by Actress Lisa Hayden, Actor Rannvijay Singh, Theater and TV personality Kunal Vijaykar, Indian rugby spearhead Nasser Hussain and 1983 Cricket World Cup winning team member Balwinder Singh Sandhu. The prizes were given away by M.P Priya Dutt and local MLA Baba Siddiqui.
The four member winning team has been given the chance to experience the World of Red Bull at Salzburg, Austria coupled with a jaw dropping visit to Hangar 7 and the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters (DTM, German Touring Car Masters) Racing Circuit.
