Red Bull Soapbox Race 2024: Fareham's Go Go Gadget talk through their success and give advice for this year's race

The News, Portsmouth

Red Bull Soapbox Race footage courtesy of Red Bull

Transcript

00:00 So I'm Charlie this is Lauren we were part of the

00:03 How did you push going background how'd you get into it

00:09 On the race and then applied in 2015

00:20 Okay, so you've won in 22, but you've done it quite a few years. Oh, well, okay

00:30 Obviously this was the most successful was there any other disasters before or

00:57 Yeah, was it one of you driving that yeah a few bruises

01:01 Yeah, I watched this morning there's a few precarious moments where it nearly went wrong

01:13 Yeah, the last jump was quite hairy

01:16 When we were watching it from the top after the performance of the time

01:20 We were just so excited and then watching it back afterwards

01:23 Yeah, so we designed it around about 30 degree landing angle

01:32 And what's gonna watch your what's your background you for jobs you kind of engineers is this cuz say I'm an engineer

01:43 And I'm a doctor

01:45 Yeah, yeah

01:49 Perfect yeah, yeah, so I don't kind of people say you got a little bit crazy to do this type of things. That's true

01:56 I think we always trust Charlie's engineering on it. Yeah

02:10 I

02:12 Didn't concentrate

02:15 We sort of split our team up so there's us two and then two others and Charlie and our team engineering

02:22 So they do a lot of building a third chassis

02:24 And all this lovely would work then myself and Julie we are team aesthetic. So we do the painting and the design and things like that

02:31 And it turns kind of on the day as well watching from the TV from a safe distance

02:36 It was looks quite fun and it was kind of once kind of friendly and together and it was kind of a camaraderie

02:41 Is that the case? What's it like kind of on the day?

02:43 Just before we were called up to the race we're just chatting about

02:59 Vehicle notes. They were missing a box. Sorry nuts on their front wheel. So there was nothing stopping that wheel from coming off

03:06 So yeah, there was a rally round to find some spare bits

03:09 I couldn't find the right nut because it was a bicycle wheel as opposed to anything else and they ended up just gluing it on

03:15 and

03:17 A competition but actually the atmosphere in the pit is really nice and everyone wants

03:26 Everyone to get down and everyone so wants to get down there. So it's a great community

03:31 Even online it's great community as well

03:33 They're already talking about what they're doing for this

03:37 It's a right I said you're not not competing this year no this year no, we thought we'd take a year out

03:44 Yeah, it's what would you say to anyone that's kind of thinking about it? Maybe look at a jump in

03:49 Yeah, just do it. It's the first time we did it. I didn't know how to weld. We didn't really know what we were doing

03:55 We just had a game

03:57 And yeah we were hooked

03:59 So yeah, give it a go if you fancy

04:01 Obviously like you've seen

04:05 Charlie's like workshop and everything but you don't need it's only a small sort of shed really you don't need like loads of

04:13 pit and

04:16 Caboodle and things some people have huge garages. They make them in but you know, we made it in the back

04:43 So what made you your winning event winning cars a kind of a police

04:47 Police car gave you that idea

04:49 Gadgets car

04:52 Trying to do is work out a

04:54 Vehicle that we could build that was going to be not simple but relatively straightforward

04:59 Because we learnt our lessons from the Shaguar with compound kerbs that was out

05:04 So it had to be quite plain up

05:06 So yeah we were looking at sort of

05:08 Just common vehicles that we liked

05:10 And this one came out top

05:12 And also we could have wings

05:14 We really wanted to have wings

05:16 Because Red Bull gives you wings

05:18 And we also when we'd done it before I think

05:22 Ignoring the Shaguar

05:24 We always sort of like concentrate a lot on like the chassis and the engineering

05:28 And sort of

05:30 Because you have to do like a little performance at the top

05:32 We tended to

05:34 Kind of forget a little bit about that

05:36 And do that on the day

05:38 So we were thinking okay inspect a gadget

05:40 There's good characters

05:42 Maybe we can do something a bit more

05:44 At the top so

05:46 Spent a bit of time building some props as well

05:48 So yeah

05:50 We had a safe and some sticks of TNT

05:52 So what was the speed you got up to?

05:56 What was the kind of top speed?

05:58 35

06:00 Just before the last jump

06:02 I guess the aim of the game is to get out as quick as possible

06:04 Presumably right?

06:06 Yeah so the scoring is on three criteria

06:08 So speed is one of them

06:10 That's the one you can focus on

06:12 And then there are two others

06:14 One is the performance at the top

06:16 So that's done by a judge

06:18 So you get a score out of 10

06:20 And then the third one is creativity

06:22 So that's again before the race

06:24 The judges come round and have a look at the vehicles

06:26 And you can be talking through it

06:28 What did you build? What did you buy in?

06:30 What's the design? Why is it different from everybody else's?

06:32 And those three combined

06:34 To give you a final score

06:36 Perfect

06:38 I think it's better to say

06:40 I watched you going down for your winning attempt

06:42 This morning

06:44 Did you enjoy it?

06:46 It looked pretty scary

06:48 It looked like it was a full on concentration moment

06:50 Yeah so it was

06:52 It didn't go quite to plan

06:54 So the idea was

06:56 We'd get down all the way to the run

06:58 And just before the last jump

07:00 I'd pull a bit of string which would pop the wings out

07:02 Because they were on elastic

07:04 What actually happened was

07:06 We came over the first water jump

07:08 I came off the seat, my feet were back here somewhere

07:10 And then trying to get back into the vehicle

07:12 Whilst it was at about 30 degrees straight down

07:14 I'd already caught the string

07:16 So I didn't realise that they'd gone out

07:18 And as I was going down I was like "are they out?"

07:20 So you see me looking down a lot

07:22 I'm not really where I'm getting

07:24 I was trying to work out what was going on with that

07:26 And then once we hit that last jump

07:28 It was a "do I brake? Do I not brake?"

07:30 I'll just go for it

07:32 See what happens

07:34 I think some of that was our fault

07:36 Because when we've done it before

07:38 We've had just Al push it

07:40 But I think we were so hyped up and so excited

07:42 That Charlie ended up getting a 3 person push

07:44 Down the ramp

07:46 Rather than just one

07:48 It was quite an aggressive start

07:50 If anyone wants to get involved

07:52 How can they do so?

07:54 Just apply for the Red Bull Soapbox Race

07:56 Just pop onto the website, we've got until the end of March

07:58 Put in our application and hopefully you'll get through

08:00 Got three tips for making a soapbox racer

08:02 Start with making it strong

08:04 They take a lot of hits on the way down

08:06 So make sure it can get to the bottom

08:08 Make it fast, this one's made out of BMX wheels

08:10 Make sure it's a theme you enjoy

08:12 Because we spent a couple of months building this

08:14 So you're going to be working on it for quite a while

08:16 Good luck to everyone entering the race

08:18 This reporter's found himself a bargain

08:20 I'll be using a tried and tested vehicle

08:22 As long as they don't catch me

08:24 (laughter)

08:26 (laughter)

08:28 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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