The Cub Scout Pinewood Derby that I saw -- in which the kid is to carve a model car out of a block of wood at home, to race at an event -- they had wisely issued extra kits ahead of time, for those parents who would get a little too enthusiastic about helping Junior, and had separate races among the parents' cars.

Of course, the stakes were much smaller than an award or school admission that potentially makes/breaks your child's brilliant future career.

As featured in South Park episode "Pinewood Derby" [1] [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinewood_Derby_(South_Park)

[2] https://www.southparkstudios.com/episodes/oki0th/south-park-...

Also a (not south park) movie! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_and_Derby

That's frankly an amazing way to stem the number of enthusiastic parents doing their kid's projects. I wouldn't have thought of it.

Do you need to have a child to get in on the parents segment of your cub scout's pinewood derby race? Asking for a friend.

I had the same thought. :) I don't know what they're doing now. (I saw it when my mom led a Cub Scout pack, decades ago.)

If you wanted to organize some competitions in your city, the track I saw would be easy to build. You might want to design it to break down for storage in someone's garage, and to fit in the back of a couple SUVs. Maybe get city approval to host events as a block party or at a park. Or pre-arrange to donate it to a parish that hosts Scouts and has room to store it and occasionally set it up in their school gym or coffee&donuts hall.

Today, you also have more RC vehicle competitions, and (over-media-ified) generations of battling homebrew robots.