Obey the Cones
You throw on your helmet and suddenly you're living a video game from your arcade days. The engine vibrates with a potential energy about to explode, with your heart right along with it. Your body is so thick with anticipation, it's possible you could miss shifting into second. (Don't forget to shift into second!) Blood shoots faster in your veins and fuel shoots furiously into the engine with every "vroom, vroooom...."
At the "go" sign you screech off the line. You jump into first and jam into second. (Phew.) Pedal to the metal around an "S" curve and thankful you didn't just lose control. Toss the wheel left, then right and another quickie left. The squeal of your tires makes you feel a bit reckless, like you're driving like your mom said you never should. And you can't stop smiling.
The Autocross
If you hop in a helicopter and soar over South Florida's Homestead-Miami Speedway, the aerial view shows a massive racing complex suitable for the lap-racers of the international motosphere. Now look to the relatively puny paved plot in the adjacent northwest sector of the large, loopy track to find the territory of a different kind of racer: the Autocross.
Autrocross racers are a grassroots crew devoted to tightening suspension, tuning their engines, and generally souping up their cars to perform on local, custom-made courses marked with permutations of neon orange traffic cones. Some are affectionately called "cone killers" for their tendency to smoosh, drag, or otherwise mutilate the bright course markers, these racers compete anywhere they can find an ample-sized plot of pavement – usually old airfields or converted parking lots like the one at the Homestead-Miami Speedway.
Equipe Rapide
Sunday, Miami's Equipe Rapide Sports Car Club held their last event of the season at the latter, a common autocross spot. Like every other month of the year, racers drove or hauled in their vehicles as early as 7:30 a.m. to register, empty their cars, complete tech inspection, and, if they were smart, slather on at least four layers of SPF 65. (Yes, even in mid December.) They also apply their racing numbers. As most drivers use the same vehicle for autocross as they do on the street, numbers are often fashioned out of masking tape or applied as a magnet.
Meanwhile, autocross officials finished setting the day's neon orange course cones. Since each course is set differently, autocross drivers walk (or bike, or razor) the new course to mentally prepare for their five races of the day, studying the angles and tangents of its curves like a billiard master would a cue ball.
From outside the tall walls of the adjacent professional racing complex, where, incidentally, the Rum Bum race team spent the day, the autocross racers heard the appropriate soundtrack of zips and zooms of the lap racing cars on the other side of the grandstands. If these autocrossers wished to run circles on a track, they may have desired to be inside that speedway like a Little Leaguer would Wrigley Field. However, this group knows that their competitions aren't for drivers with simply a need for speed; rather, race officials compose courses that typically don't even require shifting into third gear.
Rachael Cutrufello, one of the few female competitors and a local elementary science teacher, sounded interested to see how the lap drivers would fare on the raw, twisty autocross course laid out in front of her. (She would later go on to win her division.) See, unlike lap drivers inside the speedway who focus on high speeds, autocross competitors are challenged to windy tracks with hairpin turns, "S" curves, and slaloms that challenge drivers to concentrate more heavily on tight car handling - a different kind of skill.
After the driver's meeting - where Jim "Jimmy" Grob, Equipe Rapide SCC Manager and the event's main official, reminds competitors to stay safe, to drive hard, and to heed the simple rules (killing a cone adds two seconds to your finishing time, no driving off-course, keep it slow in the pit, etc) - the 85 competitors split into four driving groups. While one group drives, one team works (replace killed cones, reports off course diving, etc), and the other two groups rest. At the autocross, "rest" typically means switching out road tires for racing tires, checking out what's under any exposed hood, and cooling and prepping your vehicle like a boxing manager his fighter - anything but actual rest.
As the cars fall in line, drivers patiently waited their turn to tour the course - more concerned with improving their speed than spinning out or killing cones. (Many do, and everyone enjoyed the show.) Grob, a former Formula 2 champion who's raced professionally for 45 years, slips into the lineup in his silver 2007 Aston Martin Vantage V8. His time is a 50.672, just a few seconds behind the day's winner - a 2007 Mazda MX-5 who completed the course at 45.359.
Behind the Wheel
Racers of all ages, trades, and driving skills competed in 26 divisions like Super Stock, Street Prepared Classes, and Street Modified. Subarus – STIs and WRXs – made a great showing last weekend at Homestead, as did EVOs and a smattering of Corvettes, BMW 325s (a couple souped up from decades past), Miatas, and Porches. The course even saw a couple Mini Coopers, a few Civics, and a Saturn.
Ron Coxe, a retired Miami-Dade firefighter who brought what looked like a glorified GoKart he calls the Thingof A Magig, raced in a four-wheeler he built from the ground up. Though Coxe gets plenty of speed from its Mitsubishi Eclipse motor (he clocked in at 52.173), handling the curves is the biggest challenge for this non-street legal crawler. Likely the most identifiable wheels at the track, the Thingof A Magig sits lowest to the ground with a spoiler-like "wing" that flies well over a foot above Coxe's head. Does it keep his tail end down? Help with aerodynamics? According to Coxe: "It's completely useless!" Well, at least it looks cool.
For another driver, Eddie Pardo, and his 2006 Nissan 350Z, Sunday's race marked the last of his first full year autocrossing. Hard for him to stay away, Pardo competed practically every weekend of 2009, regardless of his packed schedule from his vocation by day as a flight instructor. On Miami freeways, he says, you'll usually find his 350Z going 47-50 mph in the right lane. The autocross track, he said, "is the only time it gets to stretch its wings." Wings on the ground and in the sky? Not bad, Pardo. Not bad. (Not a bad time either at 50.519.)
One of the most memorable drivers of the day was one Nicholas Cutrufello, husband of Rachael (the science teacher who won the D Street Prepared Ladies Division) and a fourth year medical student at the University of Miami. Cutrufello and his wife ran their 1986 BMW 325 – not the best looker of the bunch, but it certainly earned its racing tires. Cutrufello and his 325 ran some killer times – his best being 50.858. The real killing, though, happened to about 15 cones marking the home stretch.
Video shows Cutrufello polishing off his last run. He's about to break 50.000! Uh Oh... He's looking shaky! Cutrufello loses control! And with a smoky screech of tires, the 325 barreled into the lines of cones like a bowling ball – making it rain neon orange as he spun a 180 and came to a stop with his rear bumper in a nearby plastic barricade. Luckily, Cutrufello and his 325 left the grisly cone massacre unscathed – all smiles, as a matter of fact. As he left Miami's last autocross of 2009 on Sunday, he drove away knowing he well earned the title: "Cone Killer." And he's got the tire tracks to prove it.
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