ABG wins Bridlington Soapbox Challenge

The event drew crowds of around 20,000 spectators and involved twenty corporate teams racing their soapbox carts against each other down a specially prepared section of the town’s South Marine Drive.

Funded by the Yorkshire Coast BID to help boost visitors to the resort, the event aimed to raise money for various charities and schools, with proceeds going to Bridlington RNLI, Yorkshire Air Ambulance (YAA) and more.

Used primarily to showcase the engineering skills of ABG’s apprentices, the cart construction took six months, with help from the company’s senior engineers using CAD design and milling machines. Local firms also assisted, with Scarborough-based Don French Signs supplying the cart’s graphics and Plastic Engineering Products in Hull providing the cart’s plastic fairings. 

On the day of the race, the ABG team was interviewed by the BBC before fending off intense competition to come first in the final race in a sub 27 seconds. 

‘I enjoyed putting the wide range of skills I’ve learned over the past two years to the test in a real-life experience,’ commented Zac Williamson, one of ABG’s apprentices. ‘Also, project management isn’t something I’ve done before, so working alongside a senior engineer was insightful and helped me to develop a new skill. I’d recommend the experience to any future apprentices as it’s helped me enormously over the past six months.’