Our Guiding Principles
The under-girding and overarching principle behind this event is fun.
Everything we do can be traced back to that.
- Safety.
It's no fun to get hurt.
The sport has inherent risks--if it didn't have it wouldn't be racing and it wouldn't be fun.
Recognizing that, we try very hard to establish building and racing guidelines that keep parts of humans from contacting
mechanical things and roads in a way that tears up the humans.
- Fairness.
It's no fun to feel cheated.
This is why we have the classes and most importantly the spec wheels.
You’re familiar with regulations like this if you've ever raced Pinewood Derby cars or if you follow professional racing like NASCAR.
If you don't have a level playing field--perhaps a bad metaphor in downhill racing--you don't have a competition.
You can have an event, but if someone has an advantage that someone else doesn't have access to, you can't pretend it's a competition.
- Accessibility.
It's no fun to be left out.
We've tried very hard to make the threshold to entry as low as we can without compromising safety. Derby cars are not hard to build
with the skills and tools available to anyone. If you don't have them it's a good excuse to get involved in the sport with a friend
or neighbor.
The wheels are cheap, but they're the same crappy wheel for everyone (see above). We don't want anyone to be left out because they couldn't afford to be competitive.
That's it. World Peace doesn't hang in the balance. Other than details of making the cars fit on the ramp and get moved around, every rule we
have targets one of those areas. If it doesn't, it's just in the way and we need to look at it.
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