Gravity Always Wins: 2009 Red Bull Soapbox Race

A box-fort on four wheels held two employees from a local radio station. The driver faced forward and the brakeman faced backward, but only one wheel was actually equipped with a brake. A second wheel was slowed using a spare knee pad, administered by hand. "Our station has limited commercial breaks, so we have limited real breaks," shrugged KIIS-FM's Ray Jones while looking at the half-inflated beach balls taped down as air bags. "Safety last. We just did that about 10 minutes ago."

He guessed they had spent $15 on the project. It was hard to tell if he was joking. They didn't bust their budget on registration, which was free to everybody. Organizers pre-screened applicants based solely on their design plans.

On the other side of pit row and the other end of the economic spectrum sat a vehicle that would make any 8-year-old boy's Christmas list. The shiny-red model firetruck, hinged in the middle like an actual hook-and-ladder, was driven by the real deal. Firefighters from LA County Station 36, located in Carson, had spent between $2,500 and $3,500 -- not counting bike parts donated by Huffy and a custom paint job donated by the local Maaco.

They were joined by thirty-six more entries at the top of the hill, staring down a 1,250-foot course. It weaved back-and-forth thanks to hay bale barricades enforced with metal gates. An early, small jump would eliminate poorly engineered vehicles before they reached top speed. Halfway through and about a 60-foot elevation drop from the starting ramp was hard-left turn that would eliminate many more. Anybody making it through the turn -- on pavement at slow speed or up a banked metal berm at high speed -- could easily coast to the finish line or take another small jump for show.

Over 110,000 spectators enjoyed the white-knuckle adrenalin of a nonstop ride, but they preferred the black-and-blue knuckle spectacle of a premature finish. The first team breezed through in an oversize Tapatio, smiling more than you would expect from men trapped in a giant bottle of hot sauce. Then the audience got a taste of what they came for.

The second team, S.S. I'm On A Boat, began their ride by performing a parody skit of their namesake YouTube sensation. They capsized on the berm.

The third entry made it halfway down the hill before jittering like a teenager after four cans of the sponsor's caffeinated elixir. It's hard to describe how the vehicle looked before the crash because it was moving too fast. It slammed into the wall where LAist's reporters were standing, tossing a metal barricade onto our photographer. He was fine. The driver was fine, too. The car was done. The initial smell from the crash was sharp on the nose, a piercing scent of burning rubber. Then it was replaced by the choking taste of straw dust.

Crew members wasted no time, quickly replacing the barricades and hay before sweeping the course with a broom. Meanwhile, the next team climbed the launch ramp. An announcer introduced the Mantecas, "performing their not-so-authentic Aztec ritual" dance. Their pyramid-shaped car with a giant bird beak for a hood would add to the newest ritual -- crashing in front of LAist's cameras. With the vehicle flipped upside down, the two riders had to wait for a crew to pull off the mangled wreck. They danced again, celebrating that they, unlike the Aztecs empire, had survived. Unbeknown to the men, some of their car had also survived. It began to roll down the course. They gave chase. A flying leap onto the vehicle may have destroyed it, but the crowd roared for their enthusiasm.

The day's most cringe-worthy crash came from a team aptly named Apocalypse. Tomas Pais had never raced anything before in his life. The tall, lanky driver wore boots and a tattered outfit that might have come straight from Mad Max's wardrobe. He topped it with goggles and a mask adequate for spray painting in a sandstorm. Perhaps that's how they decorated the car, which fit his gritty garb. The chassis wasn't much more than a shopping cart welded to an office chair. The original designs called for gun turrets and a skull fastened to the hood. Instead, he just got an old leather shoe serving as the brake pad.

He was clocked at 40 m.p.h. before his front wheels hit the berm -- and a hay bale. Pais' tail spun counterclockwise until he was pointing backward on the course. He hadn't lost much momentum, but his back wheels, now in front, locked up. The car didn't need horsepower to give him a lesson in torque. Unable to go forward, the front end shot up. Including his body, over 300-pounds of man and metal were violently pivoting around his head.

Pais couldn't remember exactly when his jaw dislocated, but it was sometime after his feet flew past his face -- which slammed into the metal berm. He bounced. The car bounced on him. Nobody else moved except for emergency crews, fans growing silent and wondering if Apocalypse had met his end.

Underneath the car, Pais only felt disappointment. Up to that point, he was making one of the day's fastest runs.

"Are you alright?" called out one of the race crew members as they lifted the car.

It wouldn't sound right the first time he answered. "My jaw!" mumbled Pais. He couldn't close it. He tried to say it again. "My jaw!" As he finished the second attempt, it clicked back into place. Pais got back in his car and continued toward the finish line.

Minutes later the Eager Beaver -- steering out and brakes an afterthought -- went airborne at the same spot on the berm. Plywood was eviscerated on impact with the metal, producing a loud snap and a fresh supply of toothpicks.

By late afternoon the end of the course looked like a graveyard. Dozens of the cars were tightly moored in a fenced corral. A fiberglass replica of Speed Racer's Mach 5 gleamed, unscratched, after a near-flawless ride. It finished third overall and took home the People's Choice Award. It also looked out of place next to the wrecks with with bent wheels and axles. Many had clearly seen their final ride.

In the middle of the mess sat a dapper young driver in a pinstripe business suit. James Bond looked shaken. Nothing else stirred. He was still in his replica sports car, or what remained of it, holding a chunk of the front fender. The chassis was mostly intact, just a shorn screw here and a dinged ego there. It appeared something had gone wrong in Q's workshop.

Bond was actually Phillip Allen, a mechanical engineering student from Cal Poly Pomona. Their team was a collaboration of budding scientists (he and classmate Enoch Hwang were joined by another pair from UCLA) who had drawn some attention from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. A potential senior project, it had already been through 15 tests runs, including hard turns at intersections and speeds approaching 50 m.p.h. They even used a computer-aided design program to ensure success. But they hadn't accounted for the first jump, which forced down the front end of the vehicle and shattered it. Like any good Bond escape, Allen managed to make it through the course with debris flying all around him.

The same jump was a highlight for Sean Feeley, driver for San Francisco-based Team Ironheade. "OK, I'm flying," he thought. "OK, I'm still flying. When is this going to hit?" About thirty seconds after his wheels came down, the car tore across the finish line -- brakes no longer working. The wild ride, topping out at a race record 46.1 m.p.h., was enough for Ironheade to be named Overall Winner. Scoring was a mix of points based on their time, public text-message votes, and a celebrity judging panel made up of actor Erik Estrada, American Idol contestant Kimberly Caldwell, motocross star Ronnie Renner, ESPN SportsCenter host Stan Verrett, and X Games host Sal Masekela.

Ironheade's design was an homage to the soon-to-be-released heavy-metal video game called Brütal Legend. Feeley has been to some loud concerts and felt the roar of Saturday's crowd.

"It's a little different when it's coming at you," he smiled.

We feel the same way about soapbox cars.