What are rallies?

Rallies were invented in 1977 as the basis of a new Soap Box Derby organization, the "NDR." NDR stands for National Derby Rallies. The NDR differed from the All American Soap Box Derby's traditional format of each city holding one local race per year (with the winners racing in the World Championships). Instead, drivers would race to get points all year, and there would be an annual "National Championship."

The All-American adopted the rally concept in 1986. Now, there are hundreds of All-American and NDR rallies each year. For financial reasons, the Soap Box Derby would not exist today without the rally program.

The rally points systems used by both organizations are difficult to understand. I only know the All-American system. In this system, drivers are awarded points for each rally finish 8th place and above. 8th place is worth 5 points, 7th 10, 6th 15, and so on. A winner receives 40 points. However, only your best four results all year count. Thus, someone with twenty wins gets no more points than someone with four.

Each race you participate in gives you 1 point (typically there are two or four races per weekend). So a driver with 3 second-place finishes (35 points each) after 10 races has 115 points. A third, fourth, and two sixth-place results, in 28 races would give 123 points.

The nation is divided into eleven "rally districts." Each of these encompasses a few states, except for District 11, which is Alaska. Though there are regular Soap Box Derby races in Alaska, there are no rallies. In each district, the number of rally races held is divided by 7 to get the number of drivers (with the largest numbers of points) who will qualify for the Championships in each division (sometimes there are fewer Masters races, so one fewer Masters driver qualifies than in the other two divisions).

There are three benchmarks of rally points recognized by the All-American Soap Box Derby: 100, 180, and 200. At 100, your points are officially tracked and posted on the web. You must have 100 points to qualify with a Rally title for the World Championships, regardless of whether you would otherwise be one of the top points earners in the district. At 180 points, you are officially guaranteed to qualify for Akron, again regardless of however many drivers would normally be qualified from your district.

At the 200 point level, which typically requires racing in forty rallies and winning four, drivers are entered into the "200 point club" which carries no benefits except having a plaque with your name on it on the "200 point club board" at Soap Box Derby headquarters. The first driver to receive 200 points in a season was Brian Butler in 1998.

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