Soapbox race: WALDRICH COBURG beats them all

Success is team effort

After a break of 30 years, our WALDRICH COBURG young­sters won their first title in the AZUBI class at the Soapbox Revival in Coburg. Mechan­ics Leon Küm­mel­mann and Benjamin Böhm, the chassis team with Julian Treiber, Robin Greich and Leon Scharf and driver Lukas Martin are rightly proud of their victory. After all, nobody thought they would leave the com­pe­ti­tion behind. “The best feeling,” says Beniamin Böhm, “was that we made it, even though the comments before­hand were clear.” Too heavy, too clunky and with pneu­mat­ic tires it would never be a suc­cess­ful soapbox race.

The team had exhaust­ed the size of the approved vehicle and the maximum weight of 120 kilo­grams includ­ing the driver. “We still had 3 kilo­grams of leeway,” says driver Lukas Martin with a grin.

The first steps towards success in soapbox racing

It all began with a drawing. Plywood panels served as a pattern. The shape of the body and the floor panel were cer­tain­ly also decisive. The chassis was lam­i­nat­ed from glass fiber mats with syn­thet­ic resin, then filled, primed and painted. Our logos were then applied. The appren­tices built the mechan­ics of the brake linkage, the steering unit and the axles. The team only had 6 weeks for planning, design and con­struc­tion, minus two weeks of company vacation and voca­tion­al school days.

In the course of the devel­op­ment and test drives, the brake linkages were opti­mized with steel sleeves, the axles were improved with spacer sleeves for the bearing play of the wheels and the steering unit. During the test drive, Lukas dis­cov­ered that the brakes could be over­stretched. The aluminum profiles there­fore had to be adapted to the driver and an aluminum plate had to be installed instead of the wooden board as a brake pedal.

Safety was a top priority on the agenda. “We were the best in terms of safety,” the team agrees. A sprung axle, the roll bar, the aluminum brake board, the headrest and the helmet harness gave our driver Lukas the nec­es­sary peace of mind for the race.

The soapbox race

Nev­er­the­less, the con­di­tions for the start were dif­fi­cult. After the racing teams’ first attempts, it turned out that the angle of the start ramp was too steep. Several teams touched down with the rear of their soapbox at the start. It was briefly con­sid­ered whether a piece of the rear fin should be sawn off. The better solution: jack up the bottom of the ramp and defuse it with chip­board. Then Lukas was able to show what our vehicle can do, from the start at the Stadt-Café, along Mohren­straße to the finish at Galeria-Kaufhof.

Our goal

Fin­ish­ing on time and being just that little bit better than the others was the goal for our team from the very begin­ning. Their efforts were more than rewarded with a clear victory, and if there is a con­tin­u­a­tion next year, the goal is clear. “First place and the design prize,” says Julian with a fighting spirit.