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.

Continue reading Racer Boy: Pro Solo – Drag Racing with Corners

Please welcome a new writer to the Speed:Sport:Life, Rob Krider.  Rob was the staff writer for NASA NorCal last year, and has been published in AutoWeek and MotoRacing Magazine.  Rob currently is a columnist for the Santa Maria Sun but wants to share his adventures and knowledge with a great group of car guys such as the readers of Speed:Sport:Life.  His column, Racer Boy, will be running bi-weekly and will cover every type of racing that us normal guys can possibly get involved in…from Pinewood Derby to the Demolition Derby.  This week Rob covers Solo 2 Autocross.  Please welcome Rob to the S:S:L team! — Zerin

One of the easiest/cheapest/safest ways to get into some type of motorsports is Autocrossing, otherwise known as Solo 2. Autocrossing is a timed event where an individual car maneuvers around a coned off twisty racecourse which is usually located in a large parking lot or abandoned air field. Each entrant gets three to five shots at going around the course as fast as possible and the fastest time wins. Motorsports glory is yours to be had.

Continue reading Racer Boy: Autocrossing 101, or How to Kill Cones

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It’s sad but true: when I was a kid, Internet access pretty much didn’t exist. I didn’t even start reading USENET until 1990, at which point I was already eighteen years old. In the pre-Web days, if you wanted to know something, you went to the library. If you were lucky, the answer was in a book. If you couldn’t find a book with the answer, you were more or less screwed. For example, my elementary-school library had a copy of “The Car Book 1971″ that had all the prices of new cars from 1971, and I memorized the book to the point that I could instantly recall the prices and specs of every new car sold that year. Unfortunately, they didn’t have the same book from 1972, which meant that as far as I knew, there were no cars sold in 1972. Or they were all free. Or they were all $1,999. There was simply no way to know.

The arrival of the Information Age has made that kind of knowledge starvation a thing of the past, with a few exceptions. One of those exceptions is information on amateur and entry-level-professional sedan racing. Those who talk about it on the Internet don’t really know; those who know aren’t telling, for a variety of reasons we’ll discuss below. When I started my racing “career” a few years ago, I had to learn about the costs and difficulties of racing firsthand, at my own considerable expense, and my conversations with other racers have indicated that this state of affairs is nearly universal.

Universal it may be, but it isn’t right. So in this episode of Avoidable Contact, I’m going to give you a brief tour of amateur and entry-level-professional sedan racing. Specifically, we’re going to talk about requirements, costs, and results. I can’t put you in the seat of a real race car — only you can do that for yourself — but I can at least give you a reasonable idea of what’s involved. There are resources, both print and Web, which claim to tell the truth about the costs of racing, but trust me: most of them are either pursuing an agenda or making bizarre assumptions regarding your access to things like frame jigs, TIG welders, and $100 Hayabusa engines. Since most people can’t actually do things like “knock together” an SCCA GT-2 tube chassis, a lot of the advice and information that’s out there might as well be fantasy.

To keep things simple and comparable, most of the costs discussed here will be “rent-a-ride” costs; I will discuss ownership costs in a future column, assuming there’s any interest. We’ll start with the 24 Hours of Lemons and go as far as the Speed World Challenge. So, without further ado, let’s climb to the top of the “Pyramid Of Speed” and see what’s there.

Continue reading Avoidable Contact #25: Exploring the pyramid of speed — the real costs and stories behind entry-level sedan racing.

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Story and photographs by Mark Baruth

In perhaps the most disturbing episode of nepotism since Ferdinand Porsche let his do-nothing kid “Butzi” style the 911, we have my brother, Mark, misusing the Speed:Sport:Life bully pulpit to rant about the SCCA Solo Nationals. Enjoy! – jb

Topeka, Kansas.

Not exactly the subject of many “Where I spent my summer vacation” essays. And yet, for many reasons (which have nothing at all to do with the fact that you can hit the SCCA offices with a rock from Heartland Park, the site of the event), that’s where the 2008 Solo National Championships are going to take place.

This year is to be my second attempt at competing against the best silly hat wearers the nation has to offer. My 2004 Mazda RX-8 was purchased before I even knew what autocross was, so I, of course, picked the coolest looking car on the lot-air dam, fog lights, ground effects, spoiler, traction control, stability control, even a spare tire kit! The same spare tire kit was the subject of nearly 5 pages of vitriolic discussion at RX8club (the brace makes the rear end stiffer! No it doesn’t! Yes it does!). I’m also reluctant to chop my exhaust on the car, since it is also my daily driver. Unfortunately, all of that stuff adds weight, and as ski jumpers say, Fat Doesn’t Fly.

However, none of that will matter this year. I feel great about my chances in Topeka- I trophied at a National Tour event, and have consistently placed among the top drivers in my region in PAX. On the negative side, I blew a motor earlier in the car earlier in the year (thanks for the new Renesis, Mazda!), plus I’m a new dad, so Topeka will only be my 6th event of the year. Never mind-a trophy is in reach-nay, it is inevitable.

Now, you may have heard from no less an authority than the SCCA website that autocross is a “low-cost, entry-level motorsport.” Tee. Freaking. Hee. Upon pulling into the paddock at Heartland Park on Monday afternoon, I am reminded why many people simply don’t go to Nationals. The preparation level of the cars is better than anything we’ve ever seen from Super Aguri. Not to mention the motorhomes, trailers, tow vehicles, and the d-bag who will stack up his Hoosier Wets in grid a few cars down from me on Tuesday morning, despite the fact that you could have driven 30 miles in any direction before seeing a cloud. One quickly realizes that in a competition measured by thousandths, your average Local Region Superstar who dominates F Stock in his ’93 Camaro is not on the same planet as these guys. When there are people writing articles in Grassroots Motorsports about how to build a $15,000 motor for a 1991 Miata (take a moment to appreciate the irony of that), something just ain’t right.

Continue reading Dude, put your cone away! The 2008 SCCA Solo Nationals from one driver’s perspective