WARNING! This blog post only contains motorsports related info. There is no sailing, hiking, or cycling stuff here partially because I cannot participate in these activities anyway.
If any of you watched the first Fast and Furious movie, you may have noticed the scene where the characters went to an event called "Race Wars". This was a day of drag racing at an abandoned airfield in the desert. The Royal City Race Wars is patterned a lot like the Fast and Furious Race Wars.
So where is Royal City? It is a small farming town in eastern Washington. A friend and I left Port Orchard early Saturday morning and headed east on I90. After a stop for breakfast at the summit, we continued east. Immediately after crossing the Columbia River at Vantage, we exited right and drove about 11 miles up to a high plateau to a small air strip about 5 miles west of Royal City. This air strip was just that, a small paved strip sandwiched between a county road and a paved parking area for farm equipment. Evidently, the crop duster airplanes use this small strip.
At the airstrip, a local car club sets up a day of 1/4 mile drag racing. This is totally a "race what you brought" style of racing. It more resembled legal street racing. For $30, you race the car you drove to the event, and as many times as you want to get lined up and staged. The amount of different cars was amazing. There was a lot of imported "tuners", Mustangs, Corvettes(including a couple 2014 Stingrays), trucks, motorcycles, a few older muscle cars, a couple of extremely fast Jeep Grand Cherokees and even a surprisingly quick Ford Flex. Some cars were highly modified and a lot were stock daily drivers. There was probably close to 450 vehicles racing.
This racing was totally unsanctioned and without rules. There was no helmets, harnesses or roll cages required. A lot of the cars carried someone in the passenger seat and in the back seat. I was a bit concerned about the safety, but it was a accident free day. The starts were run with a tree until it broke later in the day and then starts were conducted by hand waves. The spectator area is just a paved area where we parked and could watch from next to the strip, only separated by the return road. Bring your own chair!
The modified "tuners" were surprisingly quick. Often a Honda civic would line up along side a Mustang Cobra and blow the doors off the Mustang. The Cherokees would routinely beat the Corvettes. There was some grudge racing going on too. Everyone seemed to have a good time. It was just good clean fun!
After the event was winding down, we headed home. After a stop for gas and dinner, I arrived home at 2230.
Car lined up in the return road for their next run.
The spectator area was next to the strip.
Two tuners closely racing down the strip.
A tuner racing against a Mustang. This Honda Civic was very fast and likely beat this Mustang.
Two tuners racing.
A couple of Mustangs
A couple more Mustangs
2 comments:
Looks like fun! I had never heard of anything like that going on. Is it legal? I wonder what would happen if someone got hurt.
I would have to assume it is legal. The announcement has been out for a long time and has the Lions Club as a sponsor or mutual promoter. This is not the first year, it has been going on for several years. There was a fire truck and aid car onsite. The traffic on the adjacent road was stopped during each pass. Since we weren't racing, I don't know what waiver was being used or what kind of insurance they used.
Post a Comment