 © Paul Brown
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The Manly Thing... Rivalries of Racing Click to read Click to |
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© Paul Brown
|
The Manly Thing... Rivalries of Racing Click to read Click to |
The Manly
Thing... Rivalries of Racing
Going into 1996, I had driven on virtually every road racing course east of the
Mississippi in a twenty-six year career as a driver/owner. I had spent more money than I
earned, alienated other drivers by being too aggressive for their tastes, and created a
rocky road for a marriage that started in 1969—the same year I started racing. Racing
is an addiction, no more and no less. "Win at all costs" takes over as soon as
you suit up, and the adrenaline begins to flow. Believe this.
Racing is a society unto itself, and the rules are different. Cheating to gain advantage is rampant and creates hard feelings. "It ain’t cheatin’ unless you’re caught" is the operative sentiment when the teams, crews, and drivers arrive at the track. Soaking tires with a witches’ brew of chemicals to soften them up and make them bite better is one trick used to gain an edge. Laser-cutting holes in manifolds to get more air into an engine is another.
In racing, rivalries develop that can get downright nasty. Most of these confrontations are fueled, whether in road racing or on the short-track bullrings that make up stock car racing, by one basic, simple fact. In any accident, drivers invariably blame the other driver for what happened. There is a big difference between road racing and short-track oval racing. Road racers are under a microscope to prevent car-to-car contact. Oval track racers and officials accept what’s known as "rubbin," or fender-to-fender contact. And the smart drivers know how to spin another car out in a heartbeat without getting caught. There’s the real "rub." Tolerated or not, this contact causes temper flares that could light up a football stadium. There is, however, one major no-no: don’t go after another driver with your car when he or she is on foot.
Capron, Virginia, site of Southampton Speedway, is a tidy dirt track with modern amenities and a history of ferocious rivalries that have, at times, spilled over into dangerous, white-hot anger. Some drivers have gone after others with tire irons or any other implement of destruction they could get their hands on. Speck Edwards, nicknamed "Hurricane" because of his fiery temperament and hyper personality, and Tony Edwards (no relation) worked each other over on the track all of 1995. The end result was car to flesh contact that resulted in some legal proceedings.
Speck could be the testosterone poster boy, and he’s either hated or loved by the fans. But they buy tickets to come and see him do his thing. His speech is staccato. Every other word starts with "f" when he’s riled. And maybe when he’s not, for all I know. After one fender-banging night I interviewed him for a weekly racing publication. The only printable quote, and that was edited, came as he was holding court sitting on the hood of his car. "He got what was comin’ to him," is the clean version.
Hero or villain, this driver and countless hundreds like him around the country swirl in and out of controversy and refuse to let the "good ol’ days" die. In those days long ago, every dispute was settled with fists.
As a writer and a racer, I thought I would pull some strings and try short-track racing to see if I could play their game. I covered the track weekly and was connected with a female racer named Sunny Hobbs who was trying to move her career along. My stated purpose was to write from the inside.
That’s a racer’s lie. I will still drive just about anything that looks safe at any race track where I get a chance. Remember the word "addiction." This opportunity served all my purposes.
Southside Speedway in Chesterfield County, Virginia is called The Toughest Short-Track in the South. This one-third mile flat course ringed by boiler-plate walls has cowed many a driver, and sent some cars home looking like they’d visited a crusher at the local junkyard.
As things worked out, I qualified twelfth out of twenty-four in the Charger division, a class for limited modification Detroit iron. One row up, in tenth place, was Ms. Hobbs. My chances in the race ended early, like in the first turn after the green flag flew when a car tried to pass me by driving over my left front fender and hood. The result was a flat tire, a pit stop, and a front row seat to some boiling-over rivalries before I was mobile again and drove to the finish in back of the pack.
The clearest way to describe short track racing people is sweat-ringed blue collar to the core. Sunny Hobbs is the antithesis of this. She graduated from American University with a degree in International Relations, modeled in six European countries, and works in marketing with an architectural firm. Tall, leggy, and with a face the camera loves, she looks out of place at a weekend bullring. But she has driving talent, dedication, and gets lots of press attention. Her attributes, to put it plainly, piss off male drivers because she knows how to play the gender card. In 1995 as a second year driver and the only member of the Ovarian Set in her division who competed on a regular basis, she was hit, bumped, and ground up all year long by the mostly chauvinist male drivers. And on this night, she fought back.
She had been spun out three or four times during the race and so, afterwards, she picked out a perpetrator and rammed him in the rear bumper twice going down the back stretch. He didn’t like that and dropped his car into reverse and locked bumpers with her with tires boiling smoke while trying to back over her hood. The confrontation ended there, but she had sent a clear message that she wouldn’t be pushed around.
I drove around Sunny and her antagonist as I was heading to the pits, parked my car, and took a minute or two to think about the experience. One thing a racer told me came to mind—at the time I thought he was joking. "I’d put my Mother into the wall to win a race," he said. "But I would come back around and see if she was OK."
I don’t believe this guy was joking. After my experience, I don’t believe anyone could race on a short-track twenty-six weekends in a row without thinking, "I’ll get that sumbitch back. I’ll put him (or her) in the cheap seats."
Profile
Jerry came over and we started talking. "I don’t drive my sports car anymore," he said, "so I need a driver. You want to learn how?"
"Yeah," I said. Jerry wanted to pass on his twenty years of experience to a young driver. In those days he had this Mazda rx-2, a great car which died just last year in the twenty-second hour of a twenty-four hour race in Moroso, Florida.
We went to Summit Point raceway, a two-mile, ten-turn course in Winchester, Virginia. And I got in the car and did a four-hour night endurance race my first night out—totally dark, no lights at all. We kicked butt. I won the sprint race and came in second in the night endurance race. Jerry’s coaching? One of the differences between his sports car and my stock car: your braking zones. You’ve got to pitch the car in the corner (throw the nose in there and then drive out) because it’s got a push condition (when you’re turning the wheel the car’s not turning at the same radius, the wheels can’t respond). So you just have to approach your corners differently.
The big thing about Jerry, he never let me hesitate or doubt myself. "I can’t do that," I said. "Sure you can," he said, "I’ve seen you race. I know you can. It’s the same as what you’ve done, just a few things different." And then I’d go out and do it—things that I thought were impossible for me. I learned that sometimes you can’t do something until someone says you can.
On another subject, that altercation at Southside Speedway that Jerry mentions in his essay. During the race, with one lap to go, I was driving down the straight-away when some guy rammed me and spun me out. He had been way back in the Weld, and had been making up ground recklessly, like a kamikaze, hitting people left and right. So, instead of racing me, he took me out. After the checkered flag I caught up and rammed him pretty good, then he dropped it into reverse and lit up his tires, trying to run over me. But I lit up my tires too—kind of a shoving match with a lot of noise and smoke and burnt rubber. He didn’t actually run up on my hood but he wanted to, and his pit guys were mad and wanted to fight, and mine were making an equal amount of noise, and then I just wanted to get out of there. After that the driver in question wouldn’t talk to me for a long time, but now we’re pretty good friends.
—Sunny Hobbs
Bio
Jerry Reid
Place of residence: Richmond, Virginia.
Birthplace: Clifton Forge, Virginia.
Grew up in: Tightly wrapped poverty with wonderful extended family.
Day job: Public relations and sales for Southern National Speedway in Kenly, North
Carolina.
Education: One year of college.
Previous publication: Inside Motorsports (news editor and columnist).
Awards: "Most column inches" as sports editor for high school newspaper.
Sixteen race wins. First and second place color ad awards, Virginia Press Association.
Current project: Building ninth race car, a Mazda RX-7.
Favorite book: The Unfair Advantage by Mark Donohue and Pete van
Valkenburgh.
Belief: Greater power called God, patriarchal and caring, lets you stumble and
picks you up.
Craving: Platonic relationships with a variety of women. I love them.
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