Teams

TubTime

Garage Headquarters: Boston, MA

Driver: Aaron Turcotte

Mechanics: Randall Bird, Jessica Mackool, Matt Brigidd, Andy Aldus

Nuts and Bolts:

“Ironically, we are some of the filthiest, grimiest people I know,” laughs Randall Bird, “but we’re racing a bathtub.” Bird is a residential life coordinator at Boston’s Berklee College of Music, and with fellow campus employee Jessica MacKool, sound engineer Andy Aldus, student Matt Brigida, and fabricator Aaron Turcotte, he’s hoping for a clean sweep of the heats at the Red Bull Soapbox Race. The teammates are aware that College Hill can be a slippery slope, so they’re just hoping that no one comes along to burst their bubble.

“As children, many of us had dreams of racing in the old-school soapbox derbies, and this led to a love of vehicles – bikes, cars, skateboards…” Bird explains from a garage bay the team has rented in Boston. “Most of us have made and continue to make our ‘rides,’ whatever they may be.” The soapbox ride they’re constructing will look like a cast-iron bathtub; but in reality it will be made of space-age polymers (or at least as close as they can get, which probably means a tubular steel frame with bicycle parts, covered in fiberglass). “We’re going to give it our all on race day,” Bird promises, “because we’d hate to see all of our hard work go down the drain.”