Going Fast

Originally appeared in:
FasTrack racing weekly
June 6, 1996

As I wandered through the pits at a California dirt track event, a radical thought struck me. Why not suspend the rules for one event? What a race it would be if the Grand American (IMCA-style) Modifieds were allowed big right rear tires and true race motors! Of course, safety hubs, stronger wheels and bead locks would be required and various other items would have to be upgraded as well. Perhaps an annual gathering of the best from across the nation in a season ending competition for the National Championship would be a suitable showcase. With the top 50 teams jousting for 24 starting spots and (hopefully) a decent purse we should produce a weekend with enough thrills to carry everyone through the winter.

To see these perfectly sized race cars in true competition without any artificial limits imposed would be, as the Pennsylvania Dutch might say, 'a wonder and a joy.' Many of us have grown quite weary of controlled racing. Restrictor plates, hard tires, spoiler sizes, engine limits and a host of other devices are designed for control, but not by racers or sanctioning bodies. They are used by promoters, lawyers, accountants and insurance companies to control lawsuits, liabilities and profits.

I remember standing inside the second turn at Williams Grove a few years ago, listening to the sounds of Keith Kauffman passing another car as he finessed his way through the marbles and onto the backstretch in the Hamilton big block sprinter. With 520 cubic inches of aluminum motor in an ultra light 'throw-away' Gambler frame, it was a state-of-the-art racer for its era. It will never be known for certain, but it sure sounded to me as if a shot of nitrous oxide may have found its way into the injector stacks of that magnificent, gleaming red machine as it screamed down the backstretch, then pitched sideways, clawing its way around the big, tacky 1/2-mile clay oval. Unfortunately, that was a sound we shall not likely hear repeated in this lifetime. A wonderful, heart-stopping, open class of racing was replaced by the lower liability and higher profits of the dry track, small-block tail-chasing we've been conditioned to accept as the standard today.

Speed has built-in dangers and tragedy is always waiting to strike even the most prepared and experienced racer as recent events at Indianapolis have made so painfully clear. Yet, the whole point of racing is to prove one's strengths (both of self and machinery) by going fast, and to do so under the safest possible conditions. I'm certain racing, as well as highway travel, would be safer at 35 mph, but what would be the point of doing either at that pace? Man (and woman, in the modern world!) is fully alive only when operating at total capacity. The most satisfying racing, for spectator and participant alike, is that which tests the limits of a racer, without those limits being defined by anyone except the racer, their machine or the racetrack.

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