Sixty-five-year-old Bob Metzler’s romance with cars started when he was a young Marine in the Korean War. More than 40 years later, cars remain the retired remodeling contractor’s first love.
When Eliott Nieves isn’t working as a salesman at a Chicago automobile performance parts shop, he’s tinkering with his 1970 Chevrolet Monte Carlo. The 21-year-old Chicagoan credits his father with sparking his interest in cars.
At 15, Jeff Nack paid $83.75 for a 1966 Volkswagen Beetle. Today the 38-year-old golf course director from Glenview recalls the anxious year before he could legally drive. “I couldn’t wait to get behind the wheel of that car. I’ve always loved cars,” he said.
And when Tom Market, 43, a Buffalo Grove computer software salesman, bought his first Mazda RX7 10 years ago, he knew where to put the gasoline, “but not much else. I wasn’t really into cars, but I owned this great sports car and wanted to do something with it besides driving to and from work.”
Diverse as their ages and occupations are, these car buffs all share the same hobby-auto racing. They are not alone.
Since before Ford’s first Model T rolled off the assembly line, the thrill of auto racing has captured the hearts of Americans. Who hasn’t sat behind the wheel of the family sedan silently fantasizing about being an Unser or an Andretti?
According to John Kilroy, editor of Performance Racing Industry magazine, there are some 385,000 amateur and professional drivers of racing cars, with 77,000 involved in autocross and 150,000 in drag racing. Sales of performance equipment are at $1.5 billion a year, the South Laguna, Calif. publication of the racing performance equipment industry reported in its annual state-of-the-market issue.
The majority of the money spent in this sport is spent by amateurs, according to Open Wheel Magazine.
You don’t need to know much about cars to get started. For some kinds of racing you don’t even need a driver’s license, but you must be at least 16. You need a safe car and some free time. If your car is fast you’ll need a helmet, which can be rented for a $10 deposit and a driver’s license. The license and $5 is refunded when the helmet is returned. That’s about it.
With those requirements and a $10 entry fee, you can begin drag racing at Great Lakes Dragaway in Union Grove, Wis. Five days a week Great Lakes holds what track owner Metzler calls “grudge matches or time runs” that anyone can enter.
Drag racing consists of accelerating from a standing start to the highest speed you can reach in a quarter mile. Vehicles have a half mile to come to a stop. Races are between two vehicles, each running in its own 30-foot-wide lane. Most street cars take 15 seconds or longer on the quarter mile, reaching about 70 miles per hour. Some professional racers, at speeds of 200 to 300 miles per hour, reach the quarter-mile mark in 5 seconds or less.
“All anybody needs is a car or motorized vehicle of some kind. It doesn’t have to be fast, since they’ll be racing against vehicles like their own,” Metzler said. And, because the track is on private property, a driver’s license is not necessary, though drivers need to be at least 16.
After the entry fee is paid, the vehicle is checked to make sure it has adequate steering, brakes that don’t pull to either side and “enough rubber on the tires” to be safe, Metzler said. This technical inspection takes about two minutes.
If the vehicle was made with seat belts, you must wear them. If your vehicle is in the 15-seconds-or-slower class, you don’t have to wear a helmet and you can take a passenger along on the run, Metzler said.
After a technical inspection, the vehicle is put into one of five staging, or waiting, lanes: Street cars, or factory models; motorcycles; open-wheel, or Indy-style, cars; stock cars, factory models with racing accessories such as non-street worthy tires; and pro racers. In the street-car lane, Metzler said you see everything from trucks to sports cars and family station wagons. “People race Model T’s, ’55 Chevys, Vipers and pickup trucks. You see it all,” he said.
Most entrants will be able to make 10 runs per evening, Metzler said. He said the average age of drivers is about 25, but the range is 16 to older than 60. He says he has seen an increase in women but men still dominate by 9 to 1.
Beginners race for the fun and practice; more advanced drivers race for trophies and cash. Metzler makes sure all contestants in trophy races walk away with at least a ceramic Great Lakes Dragaway mug. Cash prizes, supplied by sponsors and the house, can go as high as $10,000.
Nieves races his Monte Carlo almost every other week, he said. Though he started this year, he has entered some races for cash prizes. Asked how he’s done, Nieves shrugs and answers, “Only OK. It’s my first year.”
Great Lakes Dragaway is host to about 1,000 drag racers a week, with spectator attendance of 1,000 on weekdays to more than 5,000 on weekends for specialty races, Metzler said. He suggests beginners come out on weeknights-the track is open Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday evenings-because weekends are often booked with funny cars that have regular auto bodies, torpedo-shaped dragsters that are basically all engine, and monster trucks. Grudge matches/time runs still take place on weekends, Metzler said; there’s just less time for them.
Metzler has owned Great Lakes Dragaway since 1955, when he invested in “157 acres of poor farmland. It’s got a lot of swampland.”
“Great Lakes is the only (National Hot Rod Association) sanctioned track between Indianapolis and Brainard, Minn.,” Metzler says. The track has been a labor of love for him and his wife of 35 years, Mary. He is a huge proponent of drag racing.
“It doesn’t cost much and when you race you get a printout that tells you how fast your reaction time is once you get the green light and it tells you how fast you drove the quarter mile,” Metzler said. Most folks, he said, will come out just to try it and then get hooked.
Metzler said drag racing is safe. Citing the 30-foot-wide lanes, the half mile stopping distance-“If you just took your foot off the gas you could stop in half a mile”-and the fact that there’s no racing if the track is the slightest bit wet. The track is even sprayed with a compound that increases traction so cars don’t spin out, he said.
For Nieves, the thrill of acceleration keeps him coming back. He is not, he said, interested in oval or road racing.
But that’s the draw for Market and Nack. Their sport, autocross, requires only a valid driver’s license, a safe auto and a helmet. Anyone can join them, almost any weekend between April and October, Nack said.
According to Rick Ruth, Chicago Region Solo Group chairman of the Sports Car Club of America, autocross is off-road, short-track competition on a fairly complex course racing against a clock. The half-mile-or-so course is delineated by pylons, usually laid out in a parking lot, and consists of slaloms, gates and turnarounds. Maneuvering the course takes from 35 seconds to a minute.
Drivers compare times against others in a like-car group, or class. Best time in each class wins a trophy. Cars are classified according to the ratio of general size and weight versus horsepower. The Sports Car Club of America, the nation’s largest autocross sanctioning group, has divided cars into 25 classes with four categories each.
The categories are: stock, street-prepared, prepared and modified. Stock means just that, said Ruth, few changes can be made outside of minor adjustments to the shocks, wheels and front sway bar. Additionally, Department of Transportation-approved soft-compound race tires may be used.
In the street-prepared car category more changes can be made, including alterations to the engine’s carburation or fuel-injection system and computer chip. Headers can be used instead of the exhaust manifold plus the springs, wheels and ride may be changed to make the car more competitive. The vehicle still must be street-safe, however, so it still must use DOT-approved tires.
Prepared cars, Ruth said, are full racing cars, “like those at Road America.” They have full race-car suspension and engine modifications and can use special tires, called racing slicks, which are not DOT-approved, Ruth said.
Finally, the modified category consists of kit cars, open-wheel formula Indy-style cars and cars with engine swaps. Ruth noted a Mazda Miata with a Chevy V-8 engine that competes occasionally in this class.
“Most any weekend in any part of the country, you can find an autocross race without having to drive more than a hundred miles,” Market said. Market and his wife, Claudia, race every weekend from April through October.
Claudia is chairwoman of Tri-State Sports Car Council and Tom the club’s new-driver liaison. The pair have been racing for 10 years. They drive a 1993 Mazda RX7.
Tri-State Sports Car Council is one of 12 groups that Market knows of, including Sports Car Club, that sanction autocross events nationally. Unlike the Sports Car Club, which sanctions other types of auto racing, Tri-State and the other groups are involved solely in autocross.
Tri-State has 135 members. The Sports Car Club has approximately 50,000 members nationally, according to Ruth.
“About 15 percent of our membership is women,” Market said. Ruth echoed a similar figure in Sports Car Club. Women can compete in open classes or in parallel women’s classes, said Ruth.
Ruth’s wife Joyce also races. They drive a 1977 prepared Mustang. “Basically the car has been lightened. Among other things, the car’s interior and side windows have been removed,” Ruth said. The shocks and suspension have been altered, and the car has a full roll cage to strengthen the chassis.
When asked how much all this has cost, Ruth laughed and said, “You know, I don’t want to know.”
The Ruths bring their two daughters and dog to the races. “It’s a real family event. People bring picnic lunches, lawn chairs,” Ruth said.
The setting is generally a large parking lot such as the one at Hawthorne Park Race Course in Stickney. No permit is required, merely permission from the parking lot’s owner, Market said.
Race entry costs the driver around $20-“Cheaper than most greens fees,” Ruth said.
Nack drives a 1964 street prepared Lotus Elan-at home and in the races. His wife, Robbie, a veterinarian, drives occasionally.
Nack said Autocross has improved his street driving skills, “but on the track there’s a great rush of adrenaline when you feel like you’re almost, but not quite, out of control.”
Market said: “This is real grass-roots racing.”
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For information about autocross call Tom Market at 708-537-3785 or Rick Ruth at 708-885-7831.
To try your hand at drag racing, Great Lakes Dragaway is on Wisconsin Highway 11 in Union Grove. It is open Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday from 6 to 11 p.m., Saturday from 10 a.m. to midnight and Sunday from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Take Interstate Highway 94 10 miles north of the Illinois border, exit at Wisconsin 11 (Exit 337-marked Great Lakes Dragaway) and go 4 miles west. For more information, call Bob Metzler at 414-878-3783.
