Night Train driver Graeme Smith. Picture courtesy of Aaron Sneddon

Night Train, driven by Graeme Smith, won the inaugural Cairngorm Soapbox Extreme last weekend, beating the team from Cairngorm Mountain into second place. Night Train was originally built and run by the Wheel Nuts at Cadwell Park, Belchford and Richards Castle before being acquired by Graeme earlier this year.

This is Graeme's first year of competing as a gravity racer, although he also races cars as well. He fought out the final race of the weekend long event against two other newcomers to gravity racing - Cairngorm Mountain and the Alford Bowling Club, both of whom built new carties from scratch especially for the event. the fourth finalist, Jim Ewen, is an experienced hand, having raced down Cairngorm before as a competitor in the Highland Wheels Extreme street luge events held in 2001 and 2002.

Who will brake first? Picture courtesy of Action-Heroes

Negotiating the Hairpin Picture courtesy of Action-Heroes

17 teams took part in the event, held over the weekend on 25th and 26th July 2009, with each team running down the 2 miles course up to 10 times. However, the strain of the practice, qualifying and group heats brought about several retirements due to mechanical failure and accidents, and by the time the finals were run on Sunday afternoon there were just 12 competitors left.

The finals were marred by an accident on the very last run of the day when one of the carties lost control at the hairpin and went into the bales wall. He was taken by ambulance to Raigmore hospital where he was later confirmed to have a fractured right leg and left heel. This was the only serious incident in the 146 competitive runs that took place over the weekend.

The final results were;

King of the Mountain

    1. Night Train

    2. Cairngorm Mountain

    3. Alford Bowling Club

    4. Jim Ewen

Best Engineered

    The Cheats

Spirit of Cairngorm

    Roy Maclennan

Furthest Travelled

    Formula Gravity

Full results can be downloaded from the Cairngorm Soapbox Extreme web site.