Arlington’s Brennan Ready for Soap Box Championships

After a long trip to Akron, Ohio, 13-year-old Daniel Brennan will have less than 30 seconds to decide his fate.

If he stays low, keeps straight and is the fastest of three down the legendary Derby Downs track, he will move on, keeping him in the hunt for a $15,000 scholarship and one of three coveted gold jackets. However, if he has any slip-up whatsoever, most likely, he will join the thousands of other spectators in the stands.

"Once I get in the gate, I'm kind of nervous because I want to win," said Brennan, who recently qualified for the All-American Soap Box Derby on Saturday, July 24, by winning the Eastern Massachusetts regional, "but once I start moving, I don't even think. I just try and crouch down, lean forward as far as I can and go as straight as I can. The straighter you go, the faster you go."

With only a few races and practice runs under his belt, Brennan, a soon-to-be eighth grader at Ottoson Middle School, knows he'll be an underdog against the vaunted Midwest racers at the All-American derby, a single-elimination tournament considered to be the sport's world championships.

However, just by making it to Akron, Brennan will be treated like a champion at the week-long festivities leading up to the race, which drew more than 70,000 fans in its heyday 50 to 60 years ago and was a nationally-televised event.

He, along with his mother and father, Kim and Kevin, his 11-year-old sister Katheryn and 8-year-old brother Nathan, will receive a police escort to Derby Downs, a 954-foot asphalt track built specifically for the race during the Works Progress Administration in 1936.

"They'll treat him with all sorts of fanfare," Kim said. "It should be really fun."

Brennan will be outfitted with championship gear after he officially signs in at the track, and it's customary for the hundreds of qualified racers to be referred to as "champ" all week.

On that Saturday, Brennan will stretch and then cram his 5-foot-9-inch, 117-pound frame into his torpedo-shaped orange car, which resembles a one-man bobsled with wheels. Then, it's up to gravity to power him to the finish.

At the qualifying race on Eastern Avenue in Arlington, Brennan, competing in the super-stock division, only reached speeds of 20 mph tops. At Derby Downs, cars can hit 35 mph.

"It feels a lot faster than that," Brennan said, "because you're tires are so thin you can feel every bump and the wind really rushes over your helmet."

Brennan got into soap box racing last year through his friend Campbell Conrad.

That's when Conrad's father, Cary Conrad, founded the Eastern New England Arlington Soap Box Derby, which gives local kids, ages 8 to 17, the chance to qualify for Akron.

The elder Conrad, a father of four, knows all too well about competing in a one-and-done derby. As a kid growing up in Glenview, Ill., Conrad became fascinated with soap box racing after reading an article in Boy's Life Magazine. He then spent eight months building a car, only to lose his first race and have his father drive him home.

"It wasn't enough," he said recently. "That's probably one of the reasons why I started this now."

Unlike the championship races, the qualifying derby in Arlington gives kids a chance to go down the course at least five times. Also, nowadays, racers are required to use a universal kit to build their cars.

Brennan built his over Memorial Day weekend with his dad.

At competitions, drivers and cars are weighed and then cars are adjusted with weights so that they all weigh the same.

After besting 32 other competitors, along with stock-division winner Patrick Barnes, an 8-year-old from Hopkinton, at the qualifying derby, Brennan will compete against more than 100 super-stock racers in a few weeks.

"I'm hoping to make it to at least the second round," he said.