Yaiza holds its first soapbox Grand Prix with eleven homemade cars

The village of Yaiza has a new fixture in its festive calendar. On Sunday 30 August, as part of the Los Remedios patron saint festivities, it staged its first Carrera de Autos Locos — a soapbox race in which eleven homemade cars took the start. None of them had an engine: they run on inertia alone, powered by gravity and by whatever the builders managed to put together in their workshops.

The street circuit measured 500 metres and mixed two straights, two chicanes, a ramp and one sharply awkward corner. The fastest stretch was the main straight between the squares of La Alameda and Los Remedios, where a large crowd watched the cars pick up speed and ended up laughing at the inventiveness of some of the designs.

Results were not decided by the clock alone. The organisers, led by Pancho Ortiz — a local craftsman, nativity-scene maker and municipal employee in the Sports Department — combined the times of each car's two timed runs with a score for its design.

The podium went to Omar Perdomo in the truck-shaped 'Eso es lo demás', whose reliability, speed and handling drew particular attention; David Rodríguez and Iván Medina with 'Novios enredadores'; and Gustavo Torres, a driver from Femés, with 'Laya', a car built to look like a palm tree. One spectator joked that Formula 1 engineer Adrian Newey could take notes from what was on display in Yaiza.

The Comisión de Fiestas de Yaiza, which added the race to the programme, reported a positive response from both drivers and public, and the event looks set to return in future editions of the village fiestas.

What a soapbox race actually involves

With no engines, everything comes down to weight distribution, wheel bearings, steering and homemade brakes. It is a low-impact competition: no fuel, no noise, and cars built over weeks in garages and yards before the fiestas. In Canarian villages it works as much as a community show as a sporting contest, which is why design counts in the scoring.

If you want to catch the next edition, the straight between La Alameda and Los Remedios is where the cars are quickest and where the crowd gathers first, so arriving early helps. With children, stand on the outside of the corners and follow the marshals' instructions: braking distances on these vehicles are short and unpredictable.