Teams

Team Bruins

Garage Headquarters: Santa Monica, CA

Driver: David Ruiz

Mechanics: Javier Ruiz, Alexander Plasencia, Carlos Velazquez, Sylvia Ruiz

Nuts and Bolts:

Team Bruins captain David Ruiz won’t be hard to spot at the Red Bull Soapbox Race. He’ll be the one with the custom-made UCLA football jersey. But he won’t be wearing it – he’ll be driving it. David is a medical student at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine, and he and his teammates Joseph Park (UCLA class of 2011), Javier Ruiz (studying at DeVry), Carlos Velazquez (attending Santa Ana College), and Paulo Diniz (UCLA class of 2012) have a common interest: they absolutely despise USC. Sounding suspiciously as though he’s forgotten the Hippocratic Oath, David states, “We are very competitive and knew that USC would be involved due to their proximity to downtown L.A., so we wanted to show them up and really annihilate them in the competition.”

These Bruins fans have the technical skills to walk their talk. David likes working with his hands and power tools, so (since he’s not yet licensed to use them on patients) he decided to apply them to the construction of “the best football-jersey soapbox racer Red Bull has ever seen.” One of Javier’s many hobbies is modifying his Mustang and Toyota to make them “outperform everyone else.” Carlos, while a talented musician, also claims to know more about cars than many mechanics his age (23). Needless to say, their racer is shaping up nicely. “We’re here for fun, friends, family, and above all to make sure that USC knows and feels that UCLA is the only true SoCal college,” David proclaims. “Go Bruins!”