Super Modifieds Racing at Charlie's Garage (part 2)

As I said previously, it is not my desire to promote any one specific class or track over another, but this is just so unique it needed to be done.  This is a follow up to the previous editorial and will be the last time I write about this class except to report results or race schedule as I would with any other class or track.

The Super Modifieds were run tonight at Charlie's Garage in Pearl, MS on a 90 foot tri-oval.  We all expected this to be a demolition derby with the winner being the last person with a car actually running at the end.  This was not the case.  There were 7 entries and 7 finishers.  The racing was actually door to door, so to speak, with some of the cars.  Maybe it was because everyone was afraid of causing the "big one".  Or, maybe it was just everyone understood they had to drive these cars more carefully than any other class they had ever raced.

The race started very clean with very few deslots.  Some people actually made it a couple rotations without any deslots at all.  The race was determined much by the cars that were not involved in the big crashes and the people who stayed on top of maintenance between rotations.  What was determined was these cars were much faster than we thought they were and were actually race-able.  One of the problems we encountered was that some of the cars would actually come out of the slot going down the longest straight under acceleration, kind of like a drag car without a wheelie bar.  Another problem was deslotted cars sliding down the bank to the inside lane.  If this happened on the back side of the track, if they corner marshal was not quick enough, the person on black might not see the desloted car due to the inside wall of the track.  This caused a couple spectacular crashes including cars taking to the air up to 4-5 feet above the track.  Also, there was the problem of cars getting upside down.  If you have ever seen sprint car racing on dirt you know that when one gets upside down the wing may dig into the dirt and send the car tumbling.  We had much the same happen quite a few times when people would go into a turn fast enough to deslot and roll over.  Once a car would get on its top it would get a spring board effect from the roll cage and wing causing it to tumble in much the same fashion.

OK, they were difficult to drive and even harder to race.  They took a lot of maintenance to keep going.  They were a danger to some of the turn marshals (one flew over a marshals head almost hitting him).  You can race almost any other class easier with less trouble.  With all that said, they were more fun than a barrel full of monkeys and the racing was better than we thought it would be.  Will everyone that raced decide they want to continue with the class?  Probably not which is a shame.  Some people just don't have a masochistic side to them.

If you have a chance to race this class... take out an extra life insurance policy on your favorite corner marshal, get a helmet for yourself for when you are marshaling, and go for it.  The worse that can happen is you give someone a concussion, tear a car up, put a hole in the wall at the end of the longest straight, and have a lot of fun in the process.