Car control

Before the black sports car could get on the course, though, a voice on the PA system overrode the sound of screeching tires: “Get the cars off the runway. A plane is coming in.”

Within seconds the tarmac was clear. All cars and people were behind the fence, waiting for the USAirways plane to land.

On an April Sunday, why were cars usurping the runway at Mercer County Airport in Bluefield, W.Va.?

“This is an autocross event, sponsored by Blue Ridge Region Sports Car Club of America, a club that’s part of the national Sports Car Club of America,” said Greer Reichow, a computer science major at Virginia Tech.

“This is the only airport the BRR-SCCA uses,” he said. Events are limited to sites with enough pavement on which to set up a course suitable for both novice and veteran autocross drivers. Other places where Reichow has run his Miata are Radford University’s Dedmon Center, Roanoke and Salem Civic Center parking lots, and sites in Lynchburg, Danville and Staunton.

Autocross, also known as Solo2, demands lots of paved, flat space, but not for NASCAR-type racing. In Solo2, only one driver at a time is allowed on the course where drivers race against the clock at speeds they would use on streets and highways.

The purpose of Solo2 is “car-control,” said Reichow. “It’s a way for you to take your car to its limit to see what it can do and to test your driving skills at that limit. You experience what you can do, safely and legally.” What you don’t want to do is lose control. Knocking over one of the red cones is usually a two-second deduction.

You don’t have to drive fancy cars either. Anything that will pass the tech inspection will do just fine. The car does have to have good brakes and tight seat belts and tires. Drivers also wear safety helmets, but if they don’t have one, BRR-SCCA will provide it.

In fact, the club makes the sport easy to enter. All you need are a driver’s license, registration fee and a car.

The airport parking lot and tarmac were filled with those cars. There were imported and domestic sports cars such as Miatas, Mitsubishis, Corvettes, and an older model Porshe and a Saab. There were sedans like Civics, Nissans, Saturns, and a Ford Fiesta. The club shuns no car -- you can race a station wagon if it passes tech inspection, and age doesn’t matter as a 1967 Ford Fairlane proved when it ran the course.

Bill Sherwood, principal of Mercer County Technical Education Center, had two cars in the race. One was a restored red Triumph, his personal car; the other was a vintage, donated Honda Civic that Tech Ed Center student-mechanics had tinkered with to make autocross-worthy.

“This competition is a learning tool,” Sherwood said. His students had practiced their mechanics craft on the Civic, and then student Devan Morris tested their work when he drove it through the course.

“The fastest I could do was 52 seconds,” he told Sherwood. “But I know what we need to do to make it faster.”

“When you get back to school, do what’s necessary to get a better time out of the car,” Sherwood said. An autocross enthusiast for the last five years, Sherwood encourages young drivers to take up the sport. “It gets them off the street where they want to drive fast and puts them in a safe environment where they can do that and improve their driving skills at the same time.”

Reichow agreed, saying, “What you learn in one run on the course could take you years to learn on the road.”

It doesn’t cost much either. Fifteen to twenty dollars will get you a spot in the line up, and “1,500 dollars will buy you a suitable car,” said Sherwood.

While some drivers grow in the sport and go on to become professionals racing in wheel-to-wheel competitions, most view autocross as a hobby. Personal achievement comes from “bettering their times,” which they do by improving their driving skills and their car’s performance. That’s the goal of Wendy Bergstein, who drove her Nissan SE-R to Bluefield from Pittsburgh. She’s signed up for a Solo2 driving class that the BRR-SCCA will hold at the Bluefield airport on Saturday, June 12th...

“Last year, my first year of competition, I cut my time by 10 seconds every time I ran. This year, I’m only cutting it by something like 2 seconds.” She’s more than willing to drive five hours to Bluefield in June, take the class, and wait around most of Sunday to drive less than four minutes in four runs.

Waiting. That’s what Bergstein was doing last Sunday -- waiting to make her first run of the day. She, like all the other drivers, was eager for the plane to take off. They had a more important use for the runway.