Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines!

It wasn’t exactly the parade lap for the Indianapolis 500, but the excitement was nonetheless high as a large group of local soapbox derby racers gathered on Barrington Drive Saturday morning for the annual Whidbey Island Challenge Series sponsored by the North Whidbey Sunrise Rotary Club.

Car sponsors for the event were from as far away as Issaquah, but all the drivers and their developmentally challenged co-pilots were from the Oak Harbor area.

“This is a great thing for the kids,” said Leo Fennegas, sponsor of the Issaquah Chevrolet team car. “For many of them, this is the first time they’ve been in the race. But they’ve all been down the hill once.”

Dave McCool said he wasn’t sure how many years the event had been held, but Richard Carter from Oak Harbor bailed the Rotary Club member out.

“It’s been going on at least 10 years,” Carter said. “I helped out when I was 10 and I’m 20 now.”

Competition was fierce among the red-shirted volunteer drivers and Bernard DeGuzman spoke for the entire group when asked who was going to win. “I am,” the 11-year-old said with a big smile.

DeGuzman was right as he and his partner, 7-year-old Devin Warren, won by a considerable margin in their first heat.

The cars rolled away from the starting gate to the bottom of the hill and Barrington Drive where they were loaded onto a trailer and hauled back to the “pit area.”

“This is fun,” said blue-shirted 11-year-old Alli Hofmire, prior to leaving the starting gate with her driver, Amelia Berner, who emphatically said she was 9 and a half years old.

The race began just before 10 a.m. and probably would have been of only short duration if not for flash bulbs in cameras held in the hands of proud parents periodically going off and delaying the cars from rolling away from the starting grid. No matter, the smiles on the kids’ faces made up for any time that might have been lost.