Congrats Team Bomp Pop Racers for taking the silver!!!
It was a great time and an awesome show!
The crowds seemed a bit sparse to me, but the contestant row was stacked deep with winners! Can’t wait for the next one! 
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The 2012 judges seemed to reward cars that finished, while falling apart in the process. Not so much this time it appears. If we realized soon enough, we would have added some glue, instead of leaving the fenders only attached by magnets. The hood wasnt planned to depart, but I wasn’t expecting it to lift off, or we would have added more attachments.
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A nice write up, with a pic of the podium and winners with champagne from The Colony Magazine’s web site:
http://thecolonymagazine.com/2019/09/red-bull-soapbox-a-success-for-the-colony/
We had a fantastic time and 2nd place was decided by .6 points which equated to .6 seconds. Not bad for our first time out!
Bomb Pop Racers received many questions on how we built our craft, so we plugged the Dallas Makerspace every time!
Here is a clip from RedBullTV.com of our race:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/2q7976t1dhd07pf/OurRaceClip.mp4?dl=0
Check out them clearing the entire big jump! The braking area was too short in my opinion, but made for much drama!
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We also cleared the long jump. At least the braking area wasn’t wet when you ran. We took out several bales and a camera man when we slid through the braking area with locked up brakes. I’m actually impressed that we didn’t bend up the front body mounting framework worse than we did.
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Were there brakes on the front wheels??
With the proportions of the vehicle we were modeling, and the seating arrangements, we wound up with the driver just in front of the rear axle, and the passenger somewhat behind it. So I am estimating better than 70 percent weight bias at the rear. And everything’s low enough compared to the 6 foot wheel base that I’m not expecting lot of weight transfer to the front. So brakes were rear axle only. It had been tested on another steep hill prior, and the brakes were confirmed to be breaking in nicely, and functioning quite well, including one panic stop.
Remember, our run was the one during the brief rain spell, so we may also have had oil washing up out of the roadway surface.
We finally saw a message with times and scores. On combined score, we were 11th over all, and one of the team members looked at the times, and believes we were also 11th that way.
When you consider that:
Our driver is a city council member
Our passenger is a leader in the local arts community
Our designer/builder/welder is an IT manager, and the VP of the economic development board
One of the other crew is another city council member
And the last crew is from the city managers office
I think a top quarter finish for their first time entering something like this isn’t bad at all.
Also, I wasn’t planning to speak for the team at the interview, I was just going to be the easel. I guess that earned me the unexpected first speaking privileges. On the inside I had a bit of the deer in the headlights going on, though I’ve been told I did quite well.
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You DID do quite well! Your end of the interview (s I saw) sounded almost polished.
Red Bull’s website(s) tend to be pretty dismal for keeping track of their events, and this one was right up there on disappointment not only during the race, but after, too. They still don’t list the winners, let alone the placement of others than the top 3. It seems like your scores, at least, should be front and center. But they never are with their events, and facts being facts, the Soapbox races are near the bottom of their events, I’m sure. I mean, when they’re running helicopters ($$$$) with Red Bull logos to drop extreme skiers onto pristine slopes for the competition, I’m pretty sure THAT outranks this event (($) in terms of expenditures, and they don’t seem to be able to keep THOSE websites up to date, either.
It’s pretty unusual for gravity racers of this ilk to have brakes on the front, the race format generally favoring significant rear-ward weight bias, braking being undesirable overall, and there usually being plenty of runoff area after the finish. I’m not sure why this race kept such a short braking zone; there was plenty of room to have stretched that to double what it was, if not more. Nearly every racer hit the barrier. It was the attempt to turn and brake at the end that snapped the Bomb Pop’s wheels, I do believe.
Also, Kevin is failing to mention (IF my memory serves properly) that the Smoke on the Water fire truck had FRIGGIN’ WILWOOD HYDRAULIC DISC BRAKES! (Someone did; pretty sure it was they).
Compared to some of the other “brakes”…I’ll just say I was kind of surprised some of the others constituted the rule-required “functioning brakes”. As my wife described some of them “a pool noodle dangling outside the car the driver was supposed to let go of the wheel to shove into the tire”. A couple were frighteningly ethereal.
And yeah… the rain was on the Smoke on the Water run ONLY. I’m not sure what message the universe was sending with that… 
For anyone wanting to see some footage, the Build Break Repeat boys (Team Patty Wagon) have some good stuff on their yootoob channel.
The first half of the video is dedicated to their own vehicle and run, and gives a pretty good overshot of the competitor experience and run, based on my limited knowledge.
Go here for the compilation of all the other teams’ runs:
Here’s the Bomb Pop Racer run:
and the Smoke on the Water fire truck:
Yes, that was us. We got a late start, and even later when we decided that the brakes on our donor vehicle that provided springs, spindles, tie rods, and front wheel hubs were just hopelessly overweight. So as I’m browsing possible brake parts, the Wilwood ones were the only ones I had no doubt we would get good parts the first time. So many other listings had photos of really poorly finished parts, reviews of warped rotors (if included) or sticky actuation, and I just didn’t have time for that.
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