Take a deep breath.
Grab a whiff of burning rubber and check the whine on that super-charged Chevelle, the orange ’71 driven by the spooky looking guy who never lets them post his times.
It’s a cool Wednesday night at Route 66 Raceway in Joliet and most of these kids are on a serious prowl, gunning to break 16 seconds or so in the quarter-mile.
Thirty years ago they would have raced after midnight along Milwaukee Avenue north of Illinois Highway 22. Or between 56th and 67th Streets on Stony Island Avenue.
Tonight, it’s a different story.
No sane gearhead dodges state troopers on the Tri-State anymore, not when he can pay $20 and legally flog his Camaro in the cornfields near Joliet at Route 66.
These Wednesday Night Street Shoot-Outs run all summer, weather permitting. They begin at 4 p.m. as early arrivals line up for Tech Inspection and go to 10 p.m. or so. On a busy night, 300 street-legal cars and motorcycles will take turns. Most get six or eight runs against the clock. Corvettes squaring off against Firebirds. Late model pickups fight it out among themselves; motorcyclists go after each other and everyone stops to watch the goof with the snowmobile on wheels.
He’s street legal?
“Well, technically no,” admits the unflappable Ken Kohrs, a soft-spoken attorney and Route 66 administrator who oversees this weekly mayhem. “We prefer to think of his snowmobile as a motorcycle. He did 120 miles per hour his last time out.”
Kohrs gets them all.
The stock 1969 Rambler Ambassador that ran a respectable 16 seconds in the quarter-mile. A yellow ’57 Chevy, a 1967 GTO.
(A typical quarter mile is run in about 14 seconds at speeds of around 90 miles per hour. Quarter miles of 11 to 12 seconds are run at around 110 and 120 m.p.h. The speed is calculated over a 66-foot patch at the end of the dragstrip.)
And then there’s Naperville’s Chris Cottongim with what looks like a rusty 1985 Chevy Blazer until he pops the hood to reveal a 1991 Corvette engine bored 30 over at 380 cubic inches. Cottongim regularly turns 13.13’s without benefit of a nitrous-oxide boost.
Nitrous oxide is a substitute for oxygen that’s pumped in at the carb. It has much the same effect as a turbocharger. The more oxygen (or nitrous oxide) you carry to an engine, the more fuel you can use, thus the bigger the bang.
But an old Blazer?
“Oh, you might say, I didn’t want anything normal,” shrugs Cottongim, owner of DuPage Transmissions in Naperville. “Before the Blazer, I had a Toyota pickup with a 305 Chevy engine and 40-inch tires. The front bumper sat too high to suit the Naperville police, and I got tired of $50 tickets. The Blazer seemed like a logical alternative. Next, I have to install the nitrous tanks. I’m thinking I’ll take out the spare tire and place ’em out of sight under the flap back there.”
Cottongim passes his Tech Inspection with no problems and heads for the cashier to pick up a Run Card. He signed his liability waiver for the season.
As the Tech inspectors wave up the next row of cars, Kohrs explains: “Our track officials look to see that each car is street legal with DOT-approved tires and mufflers. They check brakes and belts and scan for loose ballast. You can’t run the quarter-mile with a bowling ball rattling around the back seat.
“Two cars have failed Tech Inspection tonight. They had missing lug nuts and their rim studs were broken. That’s enough right there. You can’t go out like that. We try to race as safely as we can, to cut the odds of injury as much as possible. We want people to have their high-speed experiences in the safest way possible, which is under appropriate supervision on a closed track.”
The minimum age for this foolishness is 16 if you have a driver’s license and a parent or guardian sign your liability waiver. Most drivers this evening appear to be 19 to 26, strapping young bucks running late model Mustang 5.0s and mid-1990s Camaros. Kohrs estimates that the racers are about 70 percent men and 30 women.
The booth announcer in the control tower often teases them, his disembodied voice needling: “I see lots of 5.0’s out here, and you guys know you’re driving antiques. You need that new 4.6 modular engine if you want to turn any real times.”
Kohrs, a two-year observer of the Route 66 scene, notes a recent uptick in the number of Japanese cars being raced. “Mustangs and Camaros are the most popular,” he admits, “but this year I’m seeing more Eclipses and Acuras.”
Jeremie Toma of Des Plaines has his Mitsubishi Eclipse ready to run. His best time is a 14.7, but he’s hoping for 14.5 tonight with the cool weather. (“Cool nights carry more oxygen to the engine,” Kohrs says.) He’s here with his fiance, Lisa Tenuta, who plans on driving her 1996 Cavalier Z-24 for the first time.
The Tech Inspector kibitzes with Toma: “You’re not going faster than 14.5 tonight? Are you smokin’ them in the gates? You have to really stick it with this car to get a 12.” (By the way, drivers who run faster than 14 seconds are required to wear DOT-approved helmets.)
Kohrs smiles and glances over at a guy on a Suzuki crotch rocket going through Tech Inspection. He’s showing a traffic summons in lieu of his operator’s license. Kohrs can’t resist: “Did we get greetings from a law enforcement officer there?” The guy looks a little sheepish. Kohrs grins.
The occasional tattoo and Mancow goatee aside, this is a laid-back crowd. Drivers wait patiently in line, checking out each other’s cars. A group of teenage girls walks past the bleachers followed by a group of teenage boys. The sound system rolls a little Bob Seger.
Henry Konrath has his family out from Tinley Park. Konrath and his wife, Carolyn, plan to race their 1996 Corvette against daughter Megan and her husband, Brian, in their Mustang 5.0.
“The best I’ve done in this ‘Vette is a 13.65,” says Konrath, who admits to being an old gearhead from the 1960s. Carolyn adds: “This is fun. I can’t wait to run against Megan.” (In the eight heats the foursome will switch off: Husbands against wives, parents against kids, mother versus daughter, etc.)
Kohrs has perhaps the simplest of explanations for the popularity of these Wednesday night shoot-outs. “In basketball and football you have to be gifted to participate at any advanced level. To compete and have fun at drag racing you can be old or young. You don’t need any special skills.
“Where else can you test out your new BMW Z-3 and see what she’ll do?,” Kohrs continues. “Those are the folks I enjoy watching, drivers out for the first time like a Lisa Tenuta. Everybody at one time or another has felt like flooring a car to see how fast it’ll go. This is your chance.
“We do get serious racers as well. We have two guys running tonight who won’t let the tower post their times. They probably want to keep each other guessing. Maybe they have a grudge match coming up later, who knows? They’re pretty intense and their cars are just barely street legal. There’s a guy named Bob Reeger who runs the quarter-mile under seven seconds. And then you get the kid in the 1975 Grand Prix who just had the time of his life running 21 seconds.”
Jason Walls of Palos Park and his buddies are standing around with the hood up on his 1983 Buick Regal. Walls, a tire technician at the Sears Automotive Center in Orland Park, replaced the car’s original 6-cylinder motor with a stock GM 350 cubic inch engine.
“I had to have the 350,” says Walls. “My best time is 15.9. I want to beat that tonight.”
His friends laugh, but Walls seems serious. And if you close your eyes halfway and look over his shoulder, you can almost see the ghost of John Milner from “American Graffiti” nodding. The lad’s dream is that vivid.
“Thank God we live in a country that allows us to waste fuel in this fashion,” Kohrs says, laughing.
