Race Weekend

Everyone has their hobbies/interests. For some people (like me), it is cooking. For others it’s mountain biking or kayaking. For Jason’s dad, it’s cars. He is a true car aficionado---he knows everything there is to know about cars, does all his own auto maintenance, and has even built at least one car completely from parts. Some of this he has passed on to Jason who has his own encyclopedia-like knowledge of car makes/models and does most of the maintenance on his own car (interestingly enough, though, he has not offered to do any of the maintenance on mine yet!).

In addition to knowing a lot about cars, Jason’s dad also races them. Yes, that’s right—races them. In fact, Jason’s dad has raced cars for over 40 years! (He took a few years off while Jason and his brother were little at Jason’s mother’s request, but other than that he’s been racing steadily for the last four decades.) For the 3+ years Jason and I have been together I have heard a lot about the race car and the various race tracks his dad goes to several times a year but had never experienced a race weekend for myself.

Until last weekend, that is.

That’s right. Last weekend Jason and I (along with his mother) served as “pit crew” for Jason’s dad’s race in Summit Point, WV.  Truth be told, being pit crew was not as glamorous as what you see on TV which is a good thing since I know next to nothing about cars and how they work. Basically it meant that we got to be in the holding area for all the cars and help out the driver (in this case, Jason’s dad) if need be. Jason actually did quite a bit to help get the car ready (e.g., checked tire pressure, jacked the car up, changed from the dry tires to the rain tires and then back again), but I mostly sat around and soaked it all in.

Jason checking the tire pressure on his dad's care before the practice/qualifying run

There were 9 different race groups at Summit Point—each group consisted of different types of race cars. You may not know this but a lot of “regular cars” can be made into race cars. In fact, Mazda Miatas are the most popular class of cars to race in the mid-Atlantic area (because, according to Jason’s dad, they are relatively inexpensive and easy to handle). But there were two race groups of what I would call “real race cars” and Jason’s dad was in one of them (in fact, his race group is the fastest group). He drives a Formula Ford, here is what it looks like:

 This is the race car in the pit paddock

Unfortunately, despite how much cooler these cars are than boring old Mazda Miatas (which are dime a dozen if you ask me), they are dying off a little bit—his dad’s race group only had 8 cars in it (compared to like 40+ in the Miata groups) and he was the only Formula Ford running. Which meant that he “won” his race and got a checkered flag.

Jason's dad pulling into the grid (where the cars enter/exit the track) after his victory lap with the checkered flag.

All in all, it was an interesting weekend—I definitely learned  a lot more about cars than I probably ever needed to know but I feel like I got to know my father-in-law a lot better in the process.

An action shot of the race (not very close up given I don't have a good zoom lens) but you can see one of the other car types (a DSR) coming up behind Jason's dad's car. Considering they were going close to 100 mph when I took the picture, it's pretty good, don't you think?