Speed:Sport:Life

At the last ChumpCar race you blew the engine up on your racecar going up the hill toward the corkscrew at Laguna Seca. Bummer. Now your racecar is sitting dead in the garage and your wife is storing Christmas decorations on it –a felony in some states. Your old sponsor isn’t answering your e-mails, because he knows you’re just looking for free parts for the nuked motor. You, good Sir, are a long, long way from your next checkered flag. Or are you? Borrow your wife’s Hyundai (since the motor in that car still runs) and head over to a K1 Speed near you for some adrenaline pumping wheel-to-wheel racing action!

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You already have a car with a rollcage and you finally got your competition license. The only problem now is you’re totally broke from installing the rollcage and paying to go to driving school. With limited funds, how are you going to race? Simple, split the operating costs with a few friends and go endurance racing. With endurance racing, you and your friends will each get more than enough seat time and you can all share the burden fun of working on the car and paying for tires.

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After getting your ass handed to you at the local mini-golf go-kart track by eight year olds, you’ve given up on your own dreams of racing F1 (don’t feel bad, the little whipper snappers have a hundred pound weight advantage on you in a 5 horsepower go-kart). But the reason you were at the go-kart track in the first place is because you’re a daddy now. In fact one of the eight year olds that was shaming you in Turn 1 was your own kid.

You have looked into competitive go-kart racing for your child but after you did the math and saw it was going to cost the same amount to get a competitive go-kart and equipment for the kid as it would to buy you a new Lotus, you realized it ain’t gonna happen. Now what? I have the solution for you. Congratulations Dad, you’re now getting a racing promotion, you are going to be “crew chief” as you and your kid take on The All-American Soap Box Derby.

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You don’t own an Aston Martin Vanquish, you’re not independently wealthy, and you don’t have a week to kill driving across country in the BullRun or the world in the Gumball 3000 (nevermind the $120,000 entry fee –you read that correctly, 120 large). However, you think you would enjoy the experience of driving side by side with some choice exotic machinery and competing in a high-end rally event. This is where Targa Trophy
comes in. A one day, reasonably priced, rally experience for exotic cars.

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You’ve always wanted to get into road racing but you don’t own the requisite Spec Miata or Spec E30. No problem. The National Auto Sport Association (NASA) has you covered. Their Performance Touring class allows just about any four wheeled production car to run in their series. Using a system of points based on modifications allows almost any car to be equally competitive in a multi-class system. So forget the excuses, take the back seat out of your Mom’s Buick and start welding in a roll cage. Chances are NASA is holding a race in the next few weeks at a track somewhere right around the corner from your house.

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You want to get involved in some sort of motorsports but you’re dead broke and the car you’re driving has 90 horsepower on a good day, and that’s downhill. You’re in luck! There is an event perfect for you. Enter a Coursemarker/Gimmick Rallye, where the challenge isn’t who has the best ride, but who has the best mind. Coursemarker/Gimmick rallyes are events where a driver and a navigator use a set of instructions to drive through a predetermined course on public roads. The instructions are littered with gimmicks to trick teams into driving on the “incorrect” course as opposed to the “correct” one where points are gained by finding coursemarkers. These coursemarkers may give you more instructions (and possibly more gimmicks) along the rallye. First one to the finish line is usually the loser. There is no speed component to gimmick rallyes. It’s like ole Wyatt Earp said, “Fast is fine, but accuracy is everything.”

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There is that car down the street that has been sitting stagnant in that guy’s front yard for way too long. The left rear tire is flat, but other than that, the car appears to be in pretty good shape. Your buddy from high school, the one who got a C in metal shop, says if you buy the car he’ll weld a cage in it. You go down to talk to the guy to see what he wants for the car. His wife answers the door and says if you get “that piece of crap” out of their yard it’s yours to keep. You just scored a car for free, but because she couldn’t find the paperwork, you can’t register it for the street. Now what? Well, the ChumpCar World Series, the endurance racing series for $500 cars, is coming to a track near your town. Grab your Costco sockets and get to work. You’re about to become a racecar driver!
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Most of us gearheads experienced our first competitive car race in the Pinewood Derby. A seven inch long piece of wood, four nails, four plastic wheels and a sloped track –that’s it. Gravity is the only motor in this race. At first glance it seems like there isn’t much to the Pinewood Derby. However, after getting your ass kicked your first year you realize that a Pinewood Derby car can be as complicated as any real racecar. Aerodynamics, rolling friction, center of mass, weight, alignment, lane choice, there are all sorts of things that can make the car roll down the track or get stuck halfway down the hill. Of course, as a seven year old kid you have no idea how to change the center mass of a Pinewood Derby car, that’s where dad comes along.

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Getting tired of drag racing the same old straight 1,320 feet?  Is autocrossing around cones in a parking lot, racing against the clock, not doing it for you anymore?  What if I told you about a place where you could compete head to head against similar cars with similar modifications in a drag race format on two mirrored autocross courses?  Does the idea of blasting away from a drag race Christmas tree and then barreling into a tight turn interest you?  How about coming out of that turn and seeing your competitor out of the corner of your eye, sideways, coming out of his turn just a few feet ahead of you over on the other track?  You’ll need to push harder and run the next corner even faster if you plan on being the first car across the finish line.  Sounds pretty crazy doesn’t it?  It is absolutely fantastic competition.  It’s called Pro Solo, and it’s drag racing with corners.

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Remember the movie Cannonball Run?  You know, back when Burt Reynolds had a full head of hair.  Well, when I was a wee lad and I saw that movie in the theatre, the image of those two ladies with the huge racks piloting their Lamborghini Countach down the freeway and tagging the 55 MPH speed limit signs changed my life forever.

Fast forward a couple of decades, ole Burt’s hair line has receded but my yearning for an all out open road race adventure has not.  Roll tape on the Beetleball.  It’s just like the Cannonball, only instead of Lamborghinis it’s Volkswagen Bugs.  Trust me, it’s hard to get a speeding ticket in an air cooled Volkswagen, well, at least in the one I was driving anyway.

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