Stu, how'd Kobe's car do in the derby?

Just curious how things turned out this year.

They came in first place. If you would get onto Facebook you'd know that already.

1st Place! They had a state of the art 38' all aluminum track with deluxe starting gate and an electronic finish line that timed the runs to the 100th of a second. This really added alot to the race. The track was also hooked up to a laptop and big screen projector so the second the race finished, you saw the kid's name, what place they finished, the time, and the car name.

Scale speed was 205 mph and the next fastest car was 202 mph. Kobe's slowest run time was slower than the other car's fastest run time so it really was a matter of just a fraction of a second. Our backup car would have placed 3rd and our entry car from the prior year would have probably placed 5th (about the same it did two years ago). This race was really high tech compared to prior years. We had a ton of fun (winning helped).

Epiloge...
My co-worker was at his mom's and found his two cars from when he was a kid that both won first place. He loaned them to me and Kobe and I had our own mini-Pinewood Derby on our homemade two lane test track, nine cars; My 1st Place car 1973, my co-workers two cars, Kobe's three cars 2009, Kobe's three cars 2011.

Kobe's 2011 1st Place car was still the fastest, but just barely. My co-worker's two cars were 2nd and 3rd, followed by Kobe's 2011 backup car in 4th. My 1973 1st place car was way back in 7th place.

I took the track down on Sunday. On Tuesday, my brother called me up out of the blue and told me he was at my mom's and found his Pinewood Derby cars, 3rd Place 1973 (the year I won 1st) and 1st Place 1975. Looks like I'll have to run another race soon.

Oh, and I stepped forward to run next year's race for Kobe's Cub Scout Pack. Kobe and I inherited a pretty nice wheel alignment tool from one of Kobe's friends and we have already made plans to build five cars for next year and use Tungsten instead of molten lead for weight as Tungsten is 50% more dense (but quite a bit more expensive) which will give us a much lower moment of inertia.