THE PEOPLE WHO WROTE IT DOWN
Derby Hall of Fame
The official Soap Box Derby Hall of Fame, plus a second record for the racers, builders, editors, and authors who published how a gravity car goes faster.
THE OFFICIAL HALL
The Soap Box Derby Hall of Fame, Akron, Ohio.
The sport's official honour is the Soap Box Derby Hall of Fame, established by the International Soap Box Derby in 1997 to recognise people whose contributions let the Derby, in the organisation's words, "have an impact on the lives of young people". Its first member was Myron E. Scott, the Dayton newspaperman who founded the Soap Box Derby in 1934.
Inductees are honoured at the post-race awards ceremony at the Akron Civic Theatre during World Championship week. The complete membership stands at 95 people across 30 classes, 1997 through 2026. ISBD is the authority on who belongs in it; the roster below mirrors its directory so the names are searchable here, and every entry links to that member's official biography.
THE 2026 CLASS
The newest members.
EVERY MEMBER
All 95 inductees, 1997 to 2026.
Grouped by induction year, most recent first. Each name opens that member's biography on the official ISBD site. Where a member also appears in this site's technical archive, the connection is noted below the roster.
2010
Transcribed from the ISBD members directory on 3 August 2026. If a name, spelling, or year here disagrees with the official page, the official page is correct and this mirror needs fixing.
WHERE THE TWO RECORDS MEET
Hall of Fame members who also turn up in the technical archive.
Three of the names above appear in this site's Derby Tech archive, which is a useful reminder that the sport's formal honours and its technical literature describe the same people.
INDUCTED 2006
Tex Finsterwald
Sat on the Derby Tech expert panel in May 1984, answering the ground-clearance and polishing questions from an aircraft background, and judging spindle settings as "zero down and forward".
INDUCTED 2008
Don Huminsky
Wrote "Weight Distribution" for Derby News in April 1981, listed in the back-issue bibliography Derby Tech published as essential reading.
INDUCTED 2011
Jerry Van Waart
Shares a surname with Roger Van Waart of Papillion, Nebraska, who answered the same 1984 questionnaire on underside drag. Derby runs in families, and the archive should say so where it can show it.
AND THE PEOPLE WHO WROTE IT DOWN
Winning a hill is one contribution. Explaining it is another.
Alongside the official Hall, this page keeps a second and much less formal record. Soap Box Derby documents who won reasonably well. It documents much less well who worked out why they won and then handed that knowledge to everybody else, usually in a self-published newsletter posted from a home address.
Everyone below is here for a published technical contribution. Every entry names the record it rests on, and where that record is a single 1984 newsletter, the entry says so. This is a hall of fame with a bibliography, and it will be wrong in places until people who were there correct it.
THE PUBLISHERS
Someone had to pay for the stamps.
EDITOR AND PUBLISHER
Ollie Brower
Newbury Park, California. Edited and published Derby Tech, "Newsletter for the Technical Enthusiast", ten issues a year out of his own address. Wrote the sport's clearest statement of its own physics in "Energy", plus "Wheel Aerodynamics", and earlier "Properties of Wood" and "Weight Distribution" for Derby News. His editorial standard is the one this site tries to keep: "The wise feed on investigation, not speculation."
TESTING
George Brower
Southern California. Racing with his brother as the Brower Brothers on the Derby Tech expert panel. His axle-testing article is credited by other racers in the same issue with opening "a whole new range of possibilities" for how to test a car at all. Later credited with "Profiles and Courage" and "Weight a Minute".
AERODYNAMICS
Paul Gale
Nashville, Tennessee. Published the Airfoil Data Sheet that let a family lay out an 84 inch body from NACA 65A012 and 65A017 ordinates on fifteen formers, with maximum width at 40% of length. Also wrote "Car Design: On the Ramp". His questionnaire answer on ride height was one line long: "Three inches. The advantages of a lower center of gravity out weigh all other considerations."
THE RACERS
Championships that came with a method.
1983 DOUBLE CHAMPION
Tony Carlini Jr.
Known in the pits as Tee Jay. Won the 1983 Junior Division World Championships in both the All-American Soap Box Derby and the NDR Gravity Drags, which Derby Tech recorded as the first time both titles were taken in the same year in that division. His cars were "Ya Snooze Ya Lose" and the black and chrome-yellow "Flyin' Tiger". His father's account of the season credits the driving above the car: every run, "whether it be straight, fade, or swerve, was predetermined, and executed perfectly".
AUTHOR AND TEAM
Tony Carlini Sr.
Newport Beach, California. Wrote "Color Me Fast", the sport's one serious attempt to connect surface temperature, the laminar boundary layer, and finish colour, citing Abbott and Von Doenhoff and Schlichting rather than pit lore. Also honest about the size of the effect he was advocating: black over white, "about six inches". Summarised at Thermal dynamics.
DROVE THE RACE
Jeanne Barr
Named in Derby Tech as the only top competitor to put a fair drive on Tony Carlini Jr. at the 1983 NDR finals at Fort Wayne, in a field where the account says one driver left the track entirely and another wobbled the length of the hill. Recorded here because driving quality under pressure is exactly what this sport under-documents.
THE BUILDERS
Small parts, measured gains.
AXLE TREES
Hatfield and Fulton
Indiana. Credited by Ollie Brower for design work on axle trees that reduce drag between the wheel and the tree, and manage the turbulence a rotating wheel throws at the car. Brower's wheel-aerodynamics article names them directly as having "done an excellent job in this area".
WHEEL PINS
Mark Finsterwald
Credited for streamlining the ends of the axles with wheel pins fitted over the spindle ends rather than under or over the spindle, reducing air drag at the one place on the car where a rotating surface meets still air.
THE FIRST THERMAL ARGUMENT
Fred Derks
Akron, Ohio. In 1949 worked out the relationship between heat, pressure, and resistance for a gravity car with what was described as a complicated calculating system, raced a black car, and won handily. Reported in Popular Science, May 1952, and still the origin point for every colour argument in the sport.
THE PANEL
Named opinion, printed with the town attached.
Derby Tech's willingness to print a racer's name, town, and exact setting is why its 1984 survey still has value. The expert panel and readers whose answers are recorded in the May 1984 issue, and who are therefore part of this sport's technical record, were:
| Name | Town | Recorded for |
|---|---|---|
| Tex Finsterwald | Grand Blanc, Michigan | Ground clearance and polish, from an aircraft background |
| Earle Blair | Elk Grove, California | Spindle setting, 1 to 5 thousandths down and forward |
| Durward Higgins | Chattanooga, Tennessee | Setting zero down with the car loaded and inclined to the average track slope |
| Bruce Finwall | Palos Verdes, California | Ride height as a function of track, and its effect on centre of gravity |
| Nick Fischer | Louisburg, North Carolina | Weight below the axle line and ramp behaviour |
| Nevin Leichliter | Cedar Rapids, Iowa | Polishing practice and setting by track roughness |
| Gary McNall | Salem, Oregon | "You don't build your car at a race. You are there to race, so best be ready." |
| Robert Wise | Lima, Ohio | Raking the car, and thousandths at the spindle against thousandths at the tread |
| Roger Van Waart | Papillion, Nebraska | Underside drag |
| Ken Frisbey | Independence, Missouri | Clearance as air-dam avoidance |
| Dan Doupe | Penfield, New York | Low centre of gravity, and testing method |
| Jim Clemente | Akron, Ohio | Adjusting between heats on a rough track |
NOMINATE SOMEONE
This list is short because the records are thin.
The gap in this hall is enormous and it is not accidental. Local champions, long-serving inspectors, clinic leads, track builders, and the parents who ran a city race for twenty years are almost entirely undocumented outside their own towns. If you can name one and point at a record, that is a contribution to the sport.
- Name the person, their town, and the years they were active.
- Say what they contributed: a title, an article, a tool, a track, a clinic, or a program.
- Point at a record. A newsletter, a programme, a newspaper clipping, a plaque, a results sheet, or a photograph.
- Say who can confirm it.
Entries without a record are held, not published. That rule is what keeps the rest of this page worth reading. The official ISBD Hall of Fame Museum remains the institutional home of the sport's formal honours; this page exists alongside it to catch the technical contributors it was never designed to hold.
SOURCES & FURTHER READING
Check the primary material.
- ISBD Hall of Fame, 2025 class Official announcement of the 2025 inductees and the running membership total, quoted from president and CEO Scott Taylor.
- ISBD Hall of Fame, 2024 class Official announcement of the 2024 inductees, the 1997 founding of the Hall, and Myron Scott as its first member.
- Derby Tech, May 1984 - Newsletter for the Technical Enthusiast Primary source held as a photographed page set. Editor and publisher Ollie Brower, Newbury Park, California. Facts, measurements, and survey results are reported here with short attributed quotations; the issue itself remains under its own copyright and is not republished in full.
- ISBD contact and Hall of Fame Museum Best lead for locating original Derby Tech issues or obtaining reproduction permission.
- Derby Tech bibliographic leads Secondary bibliography for issues still missing. Retained for the runs that have not yet been located.