Bay freshman James Fell proudly displays his championship trophy and his car after winning the Buck&eer Super Stock Division Championship in West Virginia this past summer. (Photo courtesy of Jim Fell)

Fell makes his mark on the soap box derby scene
By Jim Horvath
Sports
Published Nov. 25, 2009

The soap box derby-bug bit James Fell at the age of 5 when he saw a movie about the 76-year-old sport.

Today, the Bay Village freshman is fully entrenched into the local and national soap box derby scene. In this, his fifth year of racing, Fell has become one of the top racers in the country and is looking to tack on a few more championships in the future.

“I remember that I liked the way the cars looked, the way they were designed,” said Fell about his early interest in the sport. “As I got older and got involved with it, I really liked the speed involved and appreciated the engineering behind it.”

“When he first got interested, he was too young to participate,” said Fell’s mom, Sally. “He stayed interested in it, though. When he was old enough, he attended a soap box derby race in Cleveland, where he was able to take a test drive.

“He had a smile on his face from ear to ear as he drove down the hill,” his mom recalled. “By the next week, he started building his own car, with the help of his dad (Jim).”

Today, Fell has a car for each of the three divisions of soap box derby racing: Stock, Super Stock and Masters. His Masters car is a sharp-looking piece of equipment that has a custom paint job featuring a fighter jet on the sides. He is currently tied for 22nd in the nation in the Masters Rally Point Standings with 170 points, according to the All-American Soap Box Derby Web site.

This past year, Fell has established himself in Region 6, which encompasses all of Ohio and West Virginia and qualifies more drivers for the All-American championships than any other region.

James Fell competes in the 2009 Buck&eer Super Stock Division race last summer in West Virginia. (Photo courtesy of Jim Fell)

He is the region’s Rally Champion in the Super Stock Division and is working to qualify as a rally champion this year in the Master’s Division. Fell is the 2009 Buck&eer champion in the Super Stock Division and is recognized as the regional champion.

On top of that, Fell won a brand new race developed by the All-American Soap box Derby organization: the 2009 Top Gun Super Stock Championship. The race provided drivers who have earned the most race points throughout the year to race each other and determine a top champion. Fell raced top drivers from all over the country, including New Hampshire, California, Georgia, Florida and Nebraska for the overall championship.

Back in the beginning, however, the wins were few and far between for the up-and-coming Fell.

“I didn’t win at all the first two years I raced,” Fell said. “I really wasn’t that serious about it. I remember racing in my first car in the Stock Division. I was 8 years old, and the car had a plain, blue shell. It didn’t even have the air foils painted, and they got pretty dirty after a few races.”

Just when Fell’s parents were wondering if all the time and effort was worth it, their son broke out with a fourth-place finish during the Cleveland Wings and Wheels Race during Labor Day weekend.

“After that, I consistently took fourth place for about a year,” Fell recalled. “That’s when we began to get serious about it. We started racing full time, and that’s when we pretty much got accepted into the Cleveland area group.

“We had some people step up and start to help us out with things,” he said. “At the time, we didn’t know a whole lot about things like spindle bending, and torque levels on the car. We bought all of our alignment tools and started working on things that would make the car perform better.”

There’s a lot more than meets the eye when it comes to preparing a car for competition, Fell said.

The most important thing is the weight of the car, he said, noting that each combination of car and driver must come out to a specific weight. The Stock Division car/diver weight is the lowest at 200 pounds, followed by 230 pounds for Super Stock and 255 for masters.

“Then there’s crossbind,” Fell explained. “You want both of your axels to be as level as possible. If they’re uneven, you’re putting weight strains on different parts of the car. That causes drag and slows you down. Also, you also want the spindles to be set where they are perfectly straight once you’re in the car.

“It took about two years of working with it, then I had to master driving. That was one of the biggest parts. There are a number of things to think about. For example, on most tracks you want to make sure you go straight down. If you turn at all, it’s a longer distance, plus you lose energy.

“There’s a lot to think about, but it’s not like we learned everything in one day,” Fell said. “Our knowledge was accumulated over time. Plus, once you make some of the adjustments to the car, you don’t have to do them again.”

Most of the work is done at home, where the cars and all of the tools and equipment take up a substantial part of the Fells’ family room. Then, there’s the task of transporting the cars to various events.

“We have to take a lot of care when we transport the cars,” Fell explained. “We have to make sure the car doesn’t shift or get bumped around. Once we’re at the race site, we keep a watch over the car so that nobody bumps it.

“My dad and I have put a lot of time and work into these cars,” he said. “Sometimes I think my dad gets a little more paranoid over it than I do. But when you put that much effort into something, you want to make sure it’s just right.”

Fell said he’s gotten two big things out of his soap box derby experience thus far.

“I’ve enjoyed the educational part,” he said. “I’ve learned a lot about the engineering that goes into this. In eighth grade, we worked a lot with simple machines, so I was able to apply a lot of what I learned there. When I get to college, I want to go into aeronautical engineering.

“There’s also the sportsmanship aspect of racing,” he said. “You get to meet people from all over the country, and even other countries like Japan, New Zealand, Guam and Germany.

“The group in Cleveland, though, is a good group of people overall. The local club is excellent, and people are always willing to help each other out,” he said.