There's More to Racing than Just Going Fast
by Danny M Mitchell Sr. ©2004
I remember it well the light changed I dumped the clutch and away I go on to the next light, as my girlfriend gripped my arm and giggled with delight as we put that ford in its place. I had a reputation to uphold as a real car guy. A person who knew how to make a car go, able to leap on oil leaks in a single bound, faster than a slipping clutch, more powerful than a stripping bolt. I really knew my way around a carburetor, I was 17 and all my car buddies would call me up for help on their rides. That was then and this is now, quite a few years later I found myself admiring a picture of a buddies 55 Chevy. A real racecar, chromemoly tube chassis, fiberglass doors, hood, trunk lid, front end, lexan windows, wheelie bars and at the heart of it all a ground pounding 925 horsepower Big Block Chevy 555 From Reher Morrison. Now I want you to know I'm no beginner and have had several bare-block up rebuilds to my credit, thanks mostly to my uncle Rusty but that's another story.
My bud noticed my interest in his ride and encouraged me to go along with him to an up coming race. I had always been a big race fan and that one race was all it took for me to take that big leap of faith that most of us have taken when deciding to either purchase or build a race car.
I had really put a lot of time into my 84 S-10 blazer and the 383 stroker motor aided by a rebuilt paxton supercharger, I felt was tough to beat. Then I took it to one of our local tracks, it was the beginning of a real education in how to go fast. I sat there in the starting lane looking at what I considered to be a most unsightly collection of home grown oddities, this was going to be a piece of cake. Several people would look at my car and admire its beauty and I would beam with pride. How fast will it go? How many horsepower does it make? These were questions I could deal with easily. The back roads had seen the tire smoke on many occasions as those radials left their mark, and My speedometer would point to a respectable 100 plus as I passed that imaginary quarter mile marker.
Then the real education began with questions like, what kind of profile did you use on the cam? Lift? Duration? Springs? What kind of CFM flow do you have on the intake? What kind of carburetor you running? Vacuum secondaries or mechanical? What are your sixty-foot times? Dimple rods? Floater, Ladder bar or 4-link? Heim joints?
My head was spinning, all would be right with the world once I hit that throttle and burned off like a rocket to the end of the track. The stage was set and the light changed and away I went, surely that guy jumped the gun, he must know the starter or he would have gotten a red light. Then it was over I took the time slip from the grinning girl at the booth and drove back to my spot in the pits, immediately my buddies came over and asked what happened? Did you break something?
The reality of truth hit me, my virginity was gone.
How could all of those old go fast magazines that I purchased and drooled over so many times be so wrong? Like most of us do at one time or another I had taken someone else's thoughts and dreams of going fast and tried to bend them into my car and most importantly my budget. I felt like I did that fateful day in my early twenties when my parent's intelligence tripled with the birth of my first child.
There's no magic wand to wave no spell's to cast, the true wizardry of making a car go fast has been cast in the blood, sweat, and tears of every racer who has gone down the track before me. The tried and true method of determining what you want to do is most important. First, ask yourself how fast do you want to go? Second, Now ask yourself how much money can I afford to spend? Third, ask again how fast do you want to go? If you haven't slowed down at this point, then get your checkbook warmed up because its about to go for a long ride.
There is no magic formula to racing only hard work and hard earned money, the power of a good motor is wasted if you can't get it to the ground. Everything works together tires, shocks, transmission, rear-end, motor, exhaust, chassis set-up, the list goes on and on and on. My education has been painfully long and expensive, the respect I now have for my fellow racers is paralleled only by my admiration of them. And to those who I have sat next to in the hot sun in my own little easy-bake oven, as the clean-up crews worked diligently to right the track again I salute you all for the education of a lifetime.
Danny M Mitchell Sr.
Send this article to a Friend
Submit your Article (Writing Tips)
Sign Up for our FREE NEWSLETTER
Talk about this article @ 
Other Resources: Racing Secrets
Back to Article List
