For those unfamiliar with it, the Pinewood Derby is a Cub Scout tradition where boys create gravity powered cars out of a block of wood, four nails, and four plastic wheels. The official rules for Pinewood Derby specifiy that the cars are to be made by the individual Scout with minimal parental involvement. However, anyone who's actually attended one knows that what it tends to turn into is a battle of egos between parents.

This year, instead of trying to mask parental involvement, I just decided to build my own car, for fun's sake, and not even attempt to submit it into the race under my son's name. Instead I let him build his own car. It came in dead last; but it stayed together, and he won a best design award. He had a great time.

The design goals for my car were simple. I wanted to make a block of wood look like a 2000-spec Ferrari F1 car while still qualifying as a legal Pinewood Derby racer. Our rules require that we use the stock wooden blocks from the official kits, the wheels and "axles" (nails) from the kit and that the wheels must be mounted in the official pre-cut slots.

With those criteria, I created the car below. It is a legal Pinewood Derby car (although I'm not sure it would survive the handling by kids of all ages associated with all the heats of a real Pinewood Derby race).

Pinewood Car	Actual Ferrari F1-2000