The Return of Thunderball

So after all the building and tweaking of KZ's PWD (Pine Wood Derby) car we finally went to the race today. We got there early for the weigh in and to make sure that we would not have to tweak his car. Again his car weighed in dead on 5oz which is the limit. He had to give it a name during the weigh in and "Thunder" was the name of his car.

The race started around 10:30 and they raced first by rank. The Bears, Wolves, Weblos 2, Tigers and Weblos 1. So unfortunately KZ had to wait a long time from the time that we got to the school until he got to see his car go. Was the wait worth it. You bet.

So when the tigers got up to race this is how the race worked. There was a point eliminationn system that was used. 1st place got 0 points, 2nd place got 1 point, and 3rd place got 2 points. When you got a total of 3 points you were eliminated from competition. So every scout got to have 3 races.

So get ready for this in the Tiger division KZ got 0 points over about 7 races. Meaning that KZ never lost a race in the Tiger division, and won the first place trophy. A shark came close to beating him but never did. You can see from the photo how close it was. KZ car is the green one.

His cars fastest time was 2.317 seconds. Very good time for a first time racer. I knew however that he would not be the pack winner based on his fastest speed. There we already cars that were running speeds of 2.299 and faster. So I knew that his winning streak would come to an end.

After all the ranks run their races, they run the pack championship. Again the same point system is in effect. KZ came in 7th overall. I would guess that there were 40 or so cars overall. So coming in seventh out of 40 is not that bad for the first time.


In the championship KZ's last race, he came in third which gave him his total of 6 points and elimanated him. As can be seen from the photo it was very close. He lost by .003 seconds!

So I would say that we had a good race day and we have some improving that we can do for next year. At least we have a time that we can try to improve upon. Next year we are going to be shooting for 2.299 or better. So below are some of the phots of the winner and his car and trophy.