By MONTE DUTTON

I enjoyed the wide world of motorsports on Saturday. “Spanning the globe to bring you the human drama of sports … the thrill of victory … the agony of defeat,”

I watched a little Indy Car qualifying from Laguna Seca – perhaps my favorite road course because of “the corkscrew” turn – and later in the afternoon the Pennzoil 250 from Indianapolis because, unlike many NASCAR fans, I actually like to watch stock cars race at the Brickyard.

The highlight, though, was the Red Bull Soapbox Race, which resulted in Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Mike Bagley apparently getting a trip to Johannesburg to announce it.

That’s in South Africa. I’m thinking it was on tape, since Earnhardt was at Indy later.

The Soapbox Derby used to be – actually still is — a nationwide (as in American) drag race of kids racing homemade, unpowered cars in downhill drag races all over the country. Once upon a time, the one in Greenville was televised on WYFF (then WFBC). The finals are in Akron, Ohio.

This one is a bit different. It is to the old Soapbox Derby what the Savannah Bananas are to baseball. The judging is based on both the time down the course and the creativity of the designs. The course has a banked dirt series of curves, a tight series of esses, a rutted section of pavement with a puddle of water and a bone-jarring bump. Hay bales enclose the course, and many of the cars crash into the ones place past the finish line. The entrants are all adults, many of whom could be stoned.

The crowd in South Africa looked as big as the one at Indy, though that’s hard to say since the Speedway is the largest stadium in the world. The crowd there was sparse.

The South Africa Bobsled team, which isn’t real, won. Personally, I thought the Flinttstones entry, piloted by a would-be Fred and Barney, should have been declared the winner.

The early entries crashed spectacularly. One of the late entries finished the run with only three tires still attached. The fastest entry looked like a Comp drag racer. Among the designs were a spaceship, one that featured dragons and a car with two front tires and one in the back.

Maybe the spaceship gave Dale Jr. a ride.

Uh, I enjoyed it. It was a snap decision. These events have been held since 2000, but it was the first one I’ve ever watched.

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