Somewhat bored, want to run the Blueberry at top speed...

[7milesout]

but I see a disturbing lack of safety gear.

Agreed. My point being, he's not putting anyone else in danger. He could help himself though.

A hundred years ago, Toyota used to race Celicas seems like once a year in Long Beach, CA. And mostly only let sissy celebrities drive / crash the cars. I loved watching those races. Aside from the stickers, painting, decoration of the cars, they were production vehicles and as equal as it gets. It was so much more entertaining than friggin Nascrap is (at least Nascrap of the last 15 years).

It would be A-W-E-S-O-M-E to have some race body out there that only raced showroom stock cars, no mods. I could go on all day about that. The funnest thing I watch (on youtube) these days is some kind of Enduro races. I forget the name of the racing body, seems like it is in Wisconsin only. Seems like it is on dirt sometimes, and sometimes on a paved track. 4 cylinder, FWD, mostly stock raceturds. It looks like an absolute BLAST. If I lived up there, I would be involved, just for the fun. Seems like 1st and 2nd place finishers get their cars confiscated, and then sold in some form. Maybe on ebay or just via offers. So, the racers dare not get too much money in their cars ... keeps the playing field as level as can be. A Mirage would be fun to enter. If it were in prime running condition, it may run with the top 10% of the field. But I think the problem for a Mirage would be, it wouldn't take as much of a beating as other makes do (maybe). And it is so light it would get bowled out of the way a lot.

[Loren]

Surely there's some circle track action around Atlanta somewhere? Most circle tracks have some kind of series for entry level racers, and often some kind of weird and questionable antics.

Many moons ago, when I was in Kansas, the local dirt track had what they called the "cruiser class". This was in the mid-90's, so 70's and 80's era full-size RWD cars were plentiful. This class had a minimum wheelbase that would accommodate a 70's era Monte Carlo. Pretty much no rules other than "you can't run a 350" because hot rod parts are so cheap for them. You had to have a roll cage, but they had no specs, just some inspector's opinion that it was "safe" or not... and most weren't. You had to remove all the glass, of course. The fun part... you had to run the throttle control to the passenger side. Driver got the steering and brake. Passenger got the throttle.

Some of the Saturn techs that I used to hang out with built a cruiser car. Some generic big ol' GM car. But, unlike most circle track beginners, these guys understood suspension, and they had access to an endless supply of used low profile 15" tires. (195/60-15 was the stock 15" Saturn size) So, they showed up with a bunch of negative camber, low profile tires... and cleaned house!

Rules for this class said that any winning car could be claimed by any competitor for $500 cash! That kept any expensive cheating to a minimum.

But, these guys had a lot of time in their car. So, one of the things they did was rig up a bottle of ATF to a vacuum line into the intake with a pair of vice grips pinching the hose. If they won a race, they removed the vice grips to make it look like they blew the engine so nobody would want to claim their car!

I've got another friend here locally who built an old Dodge Neon as a dirt track car for their 4-banger class. He's an autocrosser, and all around car guy and fabricator type. He built a good car within the rules, and knew how to properly SET IT UP... and he could drive circles around the non-drivers in that class. So, he did just that. And got accused of cheating.

Have you looked into "crap can" endurance racing? Champcar or LeMons? Maybe not ultra-thrilling, but it IS real wheel-to-wheel racing, and a lot of the fun comes from taking a car that has no business on a race track out and racing it. I did a bunch of that stuff back around 2008-2010 before I ran out of money.