Parking lot racers
Fast fun, safer than your morning commute, autocrossing is good
for you&emdash;and your car
You're a pretty good driver, right? You can negotiate turns
quickly, make fast lane changes, brake hard in an emergency; you can
drive fast when called upon. You're wrong. It's a disease that most
of us&emdash;myself included&emdash;suffer from.
Which is where an event like Push It to The Limit comes in. Call
it the race to humility; I ate two huge slices of humble pie before
finally being able to make my way around the entire minute-long
course. Driving in a situation like this quickly reminded me how much
I still had to learn.
Humility notwithstanding, events like this one are exciting, and a
great way to get to know your car and improve your driving skills.
Not only can you really push your vehicle to its upper limits on
autocross courses like this one, which had been set up in a Go
station parking lot, but you also get to test your own
limits&emdash;how quickly you can react, how fast you can turn a
wheel, how awful your habits are. (Given time, and a lot of failed
laps, you can even try to fix them.)
The rules are simple. Bring any car you want, then pump up the
tires so that they won't peel off the rims in tight corners. (For the
more serious competitors, there are several "modified" classes that
take into account enhancements such as different tires and exhaust
systems.) Take a walk or rollerblade around the pylon-defined course.
You are allowed no practice laps; doing well largely depends on your
ability to "read" the track as it whizzes up to you. Then go. Don't
knock over any cones&emdash;they're a two second penalty&emdash;and
don't go off course. Don't go in reverse.
Competition can be fierce in the parking lot. Somebody's trailered
in a custom-built race car, and there are several Corvettes and
Porsches on hand. But there are mundane cars too&emdash;a couple of
old Rabbits, a Toyota Corolla wagon, my five-year-old Accord. Much to
my surprise, there's never any snobbery. Despite the fact that it's
my first time out and I am the slowest one out there by a good ten
seconds, I'm never looked down upon or laughed at, treated as an
equal as are the other novices present&emdash;when I finally do get
all the way around, I drive back to the parking lot to a line of
raised thumbs from the Firebird, RX-7 and Integra guys.
Racing here is a bargain to boot. At twenty bucks for a whole
day&emdash;five or six runs around the track and then a few laps for
fun&emdash;it's cheaper than watching a race and much more fulfilling
because you actually get to play, even with the big guys and girls
whose cars have three times as many horses as your own. And if you
spin out, lose track of the course, or knock over a cone, you have
only yourself to blame.
There's almost no better weekend automotive activity than this,
especially for a sports-car enthusiast; despite the relatively low
speeds and high safety level, autocrossing beats any kind of
spectating hands-down. If you own a performance car&emdash;heck, any
car&emdash;and haven't tried this out, you don't know what you're
missing.