Racing down Mill Avenue, 20 student teams competed for $2,000 and 60 cases of free Red Bull in homemade chariots on Oct. 19. After each spending a $250 gift card for materials provided by Red Bull, the teams rode in anything from a piece of plywood to a working lawn mower in an attempt to win the Red Bull Chariot Race in Tempe.
Of the teams competing, 19 were made of ASU students. Each represented various campus organizations and sports teams including ASU Women’s Swim and Dive, Luminosity Lab, Greek Life and Snow Devils. The non-ASU team was Grass Grass Grass Grass, which represented GCU motorsports and took 3rd place in the event.
The teams were paired up in 10 head-to-head races. Each team also had to pick a theme and perform a 30-second skit prior to their lap around the track that was judged by a panel. The winning team, Pirates of the Pavement, did a reenactment of the bank robbery scene from "Pirates of the Caribbean".
Pirates of the Pavement won their race and had the highest overall score, which was a combination of lap time and skit scores. The team was made up of members of the Snow Devils — a ski and snowboard club on campus — but competed separately from the main Snow Devils team.
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"We got solid rubber wheels at the front with some cast wheels at the back," said Ben Young, a junior studying mechanical engineering and a member of Pirates of the Pavement. "We have one person in the front pulling, one behind and a sail to give us an advantage."
Fellow teammate Alex Bostley, a junior studying aerospace engineering, seemed most excited that their teams chariot "We really thought it was gonna break like super clean down the middle. We broke the wood. We still should have gotten a little higher (score)."
The track started on Mill Avenue before veering right onto Sixth Street. From there, teams went straight toward the roundabout where they stopped to answer a trivia question and complete a driver switch. After the driver switch, teams raced around the roundabout and back to the finish in front of C.A.S.A. Tempe, a popular local bar.
"It was so fun! It felt like ... a freaking tornado," said Ashlyn Kirsch, a graduate student studying business analytics. "I felt like I was going so fast. I was like 'please don’t flip, please don’t tip,'"
Kirsch is a member of the Sun Devil Women’s Swim and Dive team who competed as the Swimmin' Saguaros. Their chariot was mainly made out of a trashcan, and while the team did not place, overall they did win their individual matchup.
"Once we started hitting the bend, we were so stable," Kirsch said. "It’s like 'Oh, we got this, we’re golden.' Once we hit that turn I knew we were gonna win."
Teams received a five-second time penalty if they missed the trivia question in the middle of the race. Competing as the Pigonauts, the team from ASU’s Luminosity Lab missed their trivia question and were penalized.
"They asked the other team what’s Batman’s real name and they asked us what the basketball arena is called," said Trevor Callow, a sophomore studying engineering and a member of the Pigonauts. "I still don’t know what it’s called. I just know I got booed at."
Throughout the afternoon, chariot parts were scattered at the end of the track as they fell off during the races. Despite the wide track, multiple teams crashed on course due to difficulty controlling the carts and a general sense of intense, competitive nature among teams.
"Like we said, no breaks," Callow said. "We didn’t even need them. They fell off."
While each team had four members, only one was actually inside the chariot, while two others were either pushing or pulling the chariot and the last member was waiting to be tagged in. Sol Clifford, a junior studying mechanical engineering, was one of the team members inside the chariot for Pirate of the Pavement.
"It felt really fast like inside of it," Clifford said. "When you took off, I felt my whole body weight. (It was) comparable to an F1 car."
After the race, the top three teams were given trophies and doused in Red Bull on the podiums.
"The Red Bull soapbox races have always been like a big thing, like I’ve been seeing those on YouTube forever," Young said. "The opportunity to be in that is awesome."
Edited by Senna James, Sophia Ramirez and Alexis Heichman.
Reach the reporter at allipper@asu.edu and follow @lippert_audrey on X.
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Audrey is a sophomore studying journalism and mass communication with a minor in Spanish. This is her first semester with The State Press. She has also worked at Blaze Radio.
