I was losing time in the far turnaround. I hadn’t gotten it right all day, and I knew there was another half second at least in that tricky, sliding circle. But the quick cut left before I got to that section, when the tail of my tubby Civic wobbled loose on my de-studded, overinflated CRV tires and I careened into that rare, perfect drift— that was a moment to treasure, a nail for hanging the whole dusty, educational season on the wall like a tapestry. Moments like that are what keep me coming back to SCCA Rallycross, and why I already miss it, a week after the season ended.
For the Fun
In rallycross years, a week isn’t even that long. Over the average season, we race about once a month. A week isn’t even enough time to stop worrying that you’ve broken something on your car, before realizing that everything is fine as usual, because the committee did another excellent job securing flat, smooth venues that won’t end anyone’s season with a crunch (for the most part).
But this year was different. A string of awful weather in the earlier months of the season postponed event after event, shoving them across the calendar until we had five events across the final two months. Both October and November had dual-event weekends, where we raced on Saturday and Sunday.
This created a problem. A chuckling, “good problem” at the time that has since ripened into a genuine issue. See, rallycross is so much fun that you become addicted. One monthly RX (as we type it in Facebook Messenger when we can’t stop thinking about it between events) is a good measure. You can race, revel in the joy of it for a few days afterward, then wait a few weeks before you really start getting excited again, like a spaceship slingshotting off one planet’s gravity to reach the next.
But two days in a row? Three events in a month? Now you’ll start getting all itchy. Now you get pulled into Jupiter’s beautiful, banded storms. Saturday and Sunday are done, but why can’t you go again on Monday? Rallycross should just be our primary method of transportation! Isn’t America blanketed with fields?
This landscape feature is especially evident in the Kansas City Region. As you might expect from a rallycross program in the middle of a sea of agriculture, we have plenty of venues. This year we visited six, counting the two national events we participated in, all within a few hours of the KC metro.
One of them, the site of my perfect, drifting left and subsequent frustrating turnaround, was Santa Fe Trail Cycle Park in Carbondale, the chief haunt of our neighboring Kansas Region. The KR loons come out to so many of our events that we decided to do a joint event with them for our season finale, though they have one more independent event in December that I’m itching to race.
The Midwest Division of the SCCA is almost crowded with RX programs. Wichita, St. Louis, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Des Moines, to name a few. You can’t do a lap of the Bread Basket without driving through a dust cloud kicked up by a battered Impreza dodging cones.
And the greatness of Sports Car Club of America membership is that America part. It’s a national club. Join, and for $35 you can run any autocross or rallycross event from sea to shining sea (or in the middle of the sea, since Hawaii has two regions, and Guam has another).
In fact, whenever I take a road trip, I check to see if there’s an event on the way. My rallycross car, a 2006 Honda Civic Si, is also my daily driver, and it easily fits all four of my rallycross wheels (sporting basic snow tires, two of which I sourced from Zohr for an excellent price), and all the tools I need, with plenty of room left for luggage— especially since I took out the front passenger seat to save weight.
With this wealth of cargo space and such a loaded calendar, I slip into visions of touring the country as a sideways vagabond, crashing on couches and slamming out articles in coffee shops during the week, then clogging my grille with mud and cones on the weekends, a permanent smile shining through the dirt on my face.
For the Challenge
Then there’s the competition. When I first dipped my toes into this quicksand, I told myself it was only to “have fun” and “learn what I could.” I barely paid attention to my times or how they stacked up against those of my competitors. I didn’t worry about weight reduction. I didn’t adjust my tire pressures between laps.
But then I halfway started to get the hang of it. I’m an instinct learner. I need consistent repetition and muscle memory. No days-long playlist of Youtube videos is going to teach me how to brake steer. I just need to get out there and do it. You can see the progression that followed. I started having more fun. So I began to run more events. Soon I was learning. Then I started to get faster than a few people. Which was fun. So I ran more events. The cycle intensified, and now Fun and Competition are two dragons chomping at each other’s tails.
Take last weekend’s event. All I had to do was bring home first in my class, and I might just win my class championship for the whole season. This wasn’t a huge deal, since there are only a handful of us in the Modified Front-Wheel-Drive class, but my competitors are all talented, and dangit, I wanted that title.
My chief competitor of the season, David Williams, wasn’t running this event in our class due to car trouble, so all I had to do was take first— much easier without David in the running (he beat me at one event in an automatic Fiesta).
Enter Joshua Meffod, who rolled in from Salina with a loud, 2003 Focus SVT and a metric crap ton of talent. One look at Josh’s morning times and I realized this wouldn’t be a breeze. I spent the rest of the day crunching his dust between my molars. At the end of the day, Josh beat me by about four seconds. Since rallycross times are cumulative, that’s not much, and the defeat is enough to keep me hungry for more competition.
Sharpening that hunger is the fact that Josh and I took fourth and fifth overall, with only two of the all-wheel-drive cars and one Miata beating us out of a field of 38 drivers. My first event of the year had me at 27th of 44 cars. I can jaw all I want about just “wanting to have fun out there,” but becoming an actual competitor carries an undeniable pull. Getting faster is more fun, at least for now, and it’s only making me more itchy.
For the Balance
But even the vast wave of joy from that perfect drift, and the tugging riptide of competition’s thrill can’t extinguish the starburn realities of friction and gravity. Rallycross will eventually take a toll on my faithful marshmallow of a car. Suspension parts will wear out. Tires will crumble away. My car, theoretically, could blow up.
One of the reasons Josh and I took 4th and 5th was the engine in Mark Macoubrie’s 2005 Subaru WRX STI, or more specifically the parts of it that gave up when poor David (whose own car, you’ll remember, had broken weeks ago), was borrowing it. Mark’s an extremely nice guy (he once towed my car home from an event when I punched the radiator with a rock), and David was without a drive, so why not? If not for that breakdown, Mark, a former national champion, would’ve certainly been up there with his AWD competitors, Mark Hill and newcomer Wayne Still.
Cars are machines, and machines eventually succumb to heat. Racecars get hotter than most. My fever dream of becoming a rallycross hobo, riding the twin rails of fun and competition, would eventually flatten against that great railroad tunnel painted on the side of a cliff by a mischievous, flightless bird. It’s the same sudden stop that has crippled countless racing teams, from karting to F1. Budget. Something would break, and I’d be without a car.
Frankly, my soul would probably wear out in much the same way. Not physically. Rallycross isn’t strenuous, unless you count tire swaps. But maybe in other ways. Already I feel like a bit of an addict when I hurry into my church’s evening service, dusty and disheveled, a race around cones having displaced my normal morning attendance. My church friends are no help. They hear about my racing habit and only encourage me onward.
Emotionally, though, it’s probably smart to take a break. The next Kansas City Region event probably won’t be until April, and I can take these months to calm down and remind myself that, like 99% of the racing drivers in the world, I’m not actually a professional. I can’t devote my entire life to this, even though I feel more in touch with myself and my God during that wheel-shuffling drift just before the turnaround than I do during most of the rest of my waking life.
I need this downtime. This balance. I need to let the joy of the race mature from the present into the past, like C.S. Lewis said in Out of the Silent Planet. “A pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered.”
Would I enjoy it as much if I did it every day? Would the competition still drag me along like a white river coursing under my little kayak? Would I love it if I never paused for a while to remember it? Look, I’m not going to say I don’t want to find out. If you’re a pro rallycross team looking for a driver, don’t write me off based some late night introspection.
But I think it’s probably healthier to pause for a while between events, let my skills dull back out, let the treasured memory of the thing gain value like a rare Ferrari. And that’s just another reason why SCCA Rallycross is so perfect. We have to wait.
Until next season, I’ll stay itchy.
Convenient Tire Rotation Service | Zohr
