I think it was our second Westport Maker Faire when the suggestion about building the “Nerdy Derby” (a sort of no-holds-barred Pinewood Derby) came up at one of the organizing meetings. Someone had seen an all-wooden version at Maker Faire NY one year. I volunteered to build one for our Faire. My key inspiration was to use lawn-edging to create flexible, mult-lane tracks. And thus one of our most popular recurring events was born!

The prototype was built (and tested) in our then-unfinished basement. In 2019, I replaced version 1.0 with a new iteration incorporating some of the lessons learned over the years.