Teams

Bay St. Rollers

Garage Headquarters: Santa Monica, CA

Driver: Paul Pearson

Mechanics: Anne Pearson, Jenny Troy, Gary Leshner, Mark Dilts

Nuts and Bolts:

“I decided to enter the Red Bull Soapbox Race because I’ve always wanted to compete in the Red Bull Flugtag human-powered flying contest,” says Paul Pearson, a 53-year-old who dropped out of high school to launch a successful career building movie props. He got close to his Flugtag dream once: “We built a 16-foot-wingspan model of the Spruce Goose for the movie ‘The Aviator,’ and after filming was complete I stored it in my shop. Then we got the idea to enter this $100,000 prop in the Santa Monica Flugtag. When the studio got wind of this grand plan, they sent two lawyers and four Teamsters to pick up their soon-to-be submarine.”

Paul, his wife Anne Pearson, and their teammates Jason Angelet, Mark Dalits, and Gary Leshner don’t do anything halfway, especially when it comes to cars. Jason, a student at Humboldt State, once drove a Corvette nonstop from Hackensack to Los Angeles, and Paul and Anne have competed in Mexico’s La Carrera Panamericana event, which Paul describes as an “1,800-mile, balls-out street race.” (They’ve entered four times and finished last only twice!) Although the team members are constructing their soapbox racer at a shop in Van Nuys, they’ve dubbed themselves the Bay St. Rollers in honor of Paul and Anne’s home turf in Santa Monica. Paul assesses that their biggest challenge on race day will be keeping their mobile Hollywood sign on all four wheels, saying, “Show me a man who has never rolled a car, and I will show you someone who doesn’t drive fast enough.”