As long as you're still pulling something, you're racing
May 8, 2021 9:28 PM Subscribe
I don't know if there's really any rules and I'm pretty sure there's not really a point, but apparently every year at Rockford Speedway they have a figure 8 trailer race. That was 2018; here's 2019, and (complete with shouted COVID seating instructions) 2020. Heck, I'll even throw in 2017.
Not into trailers? You drive a hard bargain. Here's some schoolbuses.
I love figure 8 trailers! We're thinking of going to the races at Lakeport Speedway on Memorial Day, because they will have boat racing.
posted by oneirodynia at 9:39 PM on May 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by oneirodynia at 9:39 PM on May 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
Catering to those who think NASCAR is too tame and fancified but who are too intellectual for monster truck rallies - AKA Top Gear fans... ;)
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:31 PM on May 8, 2021
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:31 PM on May 8, 2021
But in England they have pantomime horse races!
posted by The Underpants Monster at 11:14 PM on May 8, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by The Underpants Monster at 11:14 PM on May 8, 2021 [3 favorites]
I love the truck pulling the boat pulling the jet ski.
posted by ensign_ricky at 3:46 AM on May 9, 2021 [8 favorites]
posted by ensign_ricky at 3:46 AM on May 9, 2021 [8 favorites]
Greg_Ace: so to extend this to the classic Top Gear universe, I'm thinking Jeremy would drive a monster truck with a huge smoke-spewing generator in the back to power the towed (working) ferris wheel, Richard would have a Mercedes G-wagon pulling a large trailer full of Diet Coke and Mentos and James would be driving a tiny battery-powered kid version of a Toyota Hilux pulling a full-sized Toyota Hilux. Thoughts?
posted by ensign_ricky at 5:15 AM on May 9, 2021 [6 favorites]
posted by ensign_ricky at 5:15 AM on May 9, 2021 [6 favorites]
Every day in every way, Idiocracy looks more prescient.
So much waste.
posted by flabdablet at 5:38 AM on May 9, 2021 [2 favorites]
So much waste.
posted by flabdablet at 5:38 AM on May 9, 2021 [2 favorites]
So much waste.
Looks to me like they're just just clearing out the front yard.
posted by thecincinnatikid at 6:32 AM on May 9, 2021 [8 favorites]
Looks to me like they're just just clearing out the front yard.
posted by thecincinnatikid at 6:32 AM on May 9, 2021 [8 favorites]
Ya ya, school bus race don't count without a bunch of third graders in each one.
posted by sammyo at 6:36 AM on May 9, 2021
posted by sammyo at 6:36 AM on May 9, 2021
and at least one bus involved that will explode if it goes below fifty mph.
posted by philip-random at 6:43 AM on May 9, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by philip-random at 6:43 AM on May 9, 2021 [4 favorites]
I've done a few friday nights under the lights at Rockford. A coworker built his own Legend car and would race there often.
The owner was a real fun guy and a really good promoter. They'd do things like give change at the ticket booth using $2 bills, then had high school kids in the stands selling raffle tickets for...guess what...$2!
The TOURNAMENT OF DESTRUCTION was always the highlight of the season, and Rockford would also arrange things like having the Green Mamba jet-powered car come by and melt a bread truck at the end of the evening.
My favorite event was Spectator Drags where, as the name implied, you could go out and race your own street car on the track against other spectators. There was that NASCAR-type hope that the jerk in the Corvette C5 would break loose in the turn and wreck his rear-end into the wall. And sometimes that happened.
posted by mookoz at 6:56 AM on May 9, 2021 [5 favorites]
The owner was a real fun guy and a really good promoter. They'd do things like give change at the ticket booth using $2 bills, then had high school kids in the stands selling raffle tickets for...guess what...$2!
The TOURNAMENT OF DESTRUCTION was always the highlight of the season, and Rockford would also arrange things like having the Green Mamba jet-powered car come by and melt a bread truck at the end of the evening.
My favorite event was Spectator Drags where, as the name implied, you could go out and race your own street car on the track against other spectators. There was that NASCAR-type hope that the jerk in the Corvette C5 would break loose in the turn and wreck his rear-end into the wall. And sometimes that happened.
posted by mookoz at 6:56 AM on May 9, 2021 [5 favorites]
So much waste.
I’m not American, and I get that culture there is different and maybe this classist-sounding comment is justified in the local context, but from where I stand it’s well, like I said. The impact from an event like this is not the destruction on the track - no one is out there trashing a new RV, these are all scrappers someone has spent leisure time converting to use for their hobby. The impact is people travelling to the event - and that impact is the same for any popular event. I’ll accept maybe this normalises a problematic destructive culture - I can see that I guess - but the action on the track is, per se, harmless.
Hydrocarbon-fuelled destruction-fests aren’t my thing either (although I did kinda enjoy the video) but I’m happy to fly half way across the world (or was) to check out something cool, and that’s almost certainly worse.
posted by memetoclast at 7:20 AM on May 9, 2021 [5 favorites]
I’m not American, and I get that culture there is different and maybe this classist-sounding comment is justified in the local context, but from where I stand it’s well, like I said. The impact from an event like this is not the destruction on the track - no one is out there trashing a new RV, these are all scrappers someone has spent leisure time converting to use for their hobby. The impact is people travelling to the event - and that impact is the same for any popular event. I’ll accept maybe this normalises a problematic destructive culture - I can see that I guess - but the action on the track is, per se, harmless.
Hydrocarbon-fuelled destruction-fests aren’t my thing either (although I did kinda enjoy the video) but I’m happy to fly half way across the world (or was) to check out something cool, and that’s almost certainly worse.
posted by memetoclast at 7:20 AM on May 9, 2021 [5 favorites]
→
RIP Green Mamba pilot Doug Rose, who (somewhat miraculously) made it to 80.
posted by scruss at 9:30 AM on May 9, 2021 [4 favorites]
Rockford would also arrange things like having the Green Mamba jet-powered car come by and melt a bread truck at the end of the evening
RIP Green Mamba pilot Doug Rose, who (somewhat miraculously) made it to 80.
posted by scruss at 9:30 AM on May 9, 2021 [4 favorites]
As I’ve said before, I hope to die in bed at the age of 95, shot by a jealous husband. But crashing a jet car I’ve driven since 1966 at the age of 80 is not a bad alternative.
posted by TedW at 10:13 AM on May 9, 2021 [7 favorites]
posted by TedW at 10:13 AM on May 9, 2021 [7 favorites]
Rockford is my home town. We moved to California when I was seven. I’m really sorry to learn that I missed all this haute couture combined with engineering finesse and gladiatorial battle. California is too low class to feature events like this. Thank you, Cortex, for connecting me back to my roots and giving me some other thing to distract me from present reality. By the way, I vote for Number 7. That guy pulled a huge trailer through all that mayhem and made it to the end.
posted by njohnson23 at 10:41 AM on May 9, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by njohnson23 at 10:41 AM on May 9, 2021 [1 favorite]
I still occasionally push my old cheater box outta the barn for the Gambler 500 and it's emphatically not about waste. It's about taking a vehicle that was bound for the wreck yard, using pieces and parts lying around the garage to bring it back to life, and giving it one more chance to get air born, which is the eternal dream of any noble steed.
The races I participate in require you to have $500 cash on hand to have a wrecker pull your junk out of the forest and we always leave the place cleaner than we found it.
Three times now I've been certain she'd reached her final leg, only to bring her limping home across the state. In the off season I use her to push down trees.
posted by Baby_Balrog at 11:32 AM on May 9, 2021 [6 favorites]
The races I participate in require you to have $500 cash on hand to have a wrecker pull your junk out of the forest and we always leave the place cleaner than we found it.
Three times now I've been certain she'd reached her final leg, only to bring her limping home across the state. In the off season I use her to push down trees.
posted by Baby_Balrog at 11:32 AM on May 9, 2021 [6 favorites]
Pantomime horse racing is one thing, roller horse racing is quite another.
posted by MtDewd at 12:44 PM on May 9, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by MtDewd at 12:44 PM on May 9, 2021 [1 favorite]
There's also boat races, where they drag boats behind the cars.
posted by ShooBoo at 12:45 PM on May 9, 2021
posted by ShooBoo at 12:45 PM on May 9, 2021
It’s so nice to see all this jolly destruction without any road rage. Also my parents tell a story about losing the axle on a boat trailer on a highway, before I was born, and this made it all seem much more vivid.
posted by janell at 12:47 PM on May 9, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by janell at 12:47 PM on May 9, 2021 [1 favorite]
bicycle racing circa 1889 was more dangerous then this.
Fistfights, championship bicycle races, and car parts:
posted by clavdivs at 2:59 PM on May 9, 2021 [1 favorite]
Fistfights, championship bicycle races, and car parts:
posted by clavdivs at 2:59 PM on May 9, 2021 [1 favorite]
I won't say that he Green Mamba video invokes in me a tailgater revenge fantasy, because that might make me seem like psychopath. So I guess there's really no elegant way to end this comment...
posted by ba at 6:38 AM on May 10, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by ba at 6:38 AM on May 10, 2021 [2 favorites]
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Thanks cortex.
posted by AugustWest at 9:39 PM on May 8, 2021 [1 favorite]