The MicksGarage Soapbox Race, in partnership with An Post & CompleteCar.ie
On Sunday 2nd November we ran the inaugural MicksGarage Soapbox Race. The charity event was supported by a raft of local businesses whom we are extremely grateful to for their support. We're still in the process of totting up the final sum raised for the Jack & Jill foundation, but it looks like we have close to €2,000 going to a very worthy cause
The Soapbox setup crew met up at the Shanks Mare Pub the day before to go over final plans, despite the lousy weather spirits were high as as 3 long months of planning were finally coming to fruition.
SoapBox Race Day:
We were absolutely blessed weather wise as we had torrential rain the day before and the day after the race, but on race day blue skies and glorious sunshine prevailed! It was an early start for the setup team and we were on-site by 7.30am, the biggest job was lining the track with almost a kilometer of straw bales and barriers.
By 8am, Orna and the guys at the Shanks Mare Pub had the smell of bacon and eggs wafting tantalizingly from the kitchen. By 9 the competitors started to arrive and first to turn up were the Ronnie Beck Allstars with their freshly painted AC Cobra looking stunning!
More and more teams rolled in and the paddock was filling up nicely. There was a great atmosphere around the place and there was a distinct buzz of excitement as nobody really knew what to expect (ourselves included) On arrival the teams had to sign-on, big thanks to Lisa and Sinead for managing all the admin and making everyone feel welcome! After sign-on the soapboxes had to be checked over by the scrutineer to make sure they were safe and complied with the regulations, some soapboxes needed more remedial work than others it would be fair to say! On the whole though the build quality and standard of engineering was absolutely amazing (I exclude our own creation from this statement by the way!) Many of the soapboxes were running full suspension, tubular spaceframe chassis' disc brakes and some even had trick rear wheel steering!
There were quite a lot of new builds and also quite a few Soapbox regulars who had been competing in various events up and down the country.
So far everything was running pretty smoothly. We had the Civil Defence Ambulance in place, the PA andcommentary was all sorted (thanks Leo) Carlow Car Club had the timing system ready to rock, our start gate, ramp and all the advertising banners were in place. We were running about half an hour behind schedule and that's something we'd make sure we tightened up on for next year.
