Teams

Lobstroid

Garage Headquarters: Portland, ME

Driver: C. Michael Lewis

Mechanics: Fred Writt, Mary Hart, Colleen Writt, Evan Writt

Nuts and Bolts:

If you had to name just one team to watch at the Red Bull Soapbox Race in Providence, you couldn't go wrong with the "Lobstroid" entry from Portland, Maine – and not just because their streamlined representation of that state's iconic crustacean Homarus americanus will be eye-catching. This team knows speed: how to get it, how to maximize it, how to win with it. Last Halloween, they won the Electrathon National Speed Trials, setting a new national record of 53 miles in one hour.

Electrathon is a competition for lightweight, high-efficiency battery electric race cars. (The power allowed amounts to barely more than one horsepower over the period of an hour.) It's all about wresting the highest possible speed from the lowest possible effort; much like – you guessed it – a soapbox contest. C. Michael Lewis, the driver who set the Electrathon record, will also steer the team's Lobstroid car on College Hill. Joining him as pit crew will be his wife, Mary Hart, as well as Fred Writt (Lewis's collaborator in building Electrathon vehicles) and Writt's wife and son, Colleen and Evan Writt. The team's primary challenge is that their very velocity could prove to be their undoing. Lewis asks with an incredulous grin, “Is there really a hairpin turn?"