Authored by David Lane
(David Lane ran his first autocross in 1968 with a Lotus Elan. He is retired after several decades as the Director of Admissions at Peabody Conservatory of Music of The Johns Hopkins University)
Last season, I was surprised to find myself at the front of a driver’s meeting, honored to be selected for the 2019 Spirit of the Sport award. I was deeply touched. A few people (okay, maybe only one) asked why I didn’t share some comments. I’ve been thinking about that, wondering if I’ve learned anything of value as I transitioned from being the new kid in 1967 with the new Lotus Elan, to the old guy in 2019 with the old RX-7.
Maybe I have.
It’s tempting to talk about history. For instance, when I first started assaulting cones cable TV was relatively new, and not yet allowed to compete with broadcasters in urban markets. The flip-phone was a thing of science fiction (“Beam me up, Scotty”). You kept track of events and results by subscribing to The Stopwatcher—a 10-page “Weekly sentinel for the sports car set, serving the Middle Atlantic States Area.” Autocrosses were hosted by clubs belonging to the Washington or Baltimore Sportscar Counsels. The first SCCA nationals did not occur until the early 1970s.
Tire Rack did not exist until 1979, and they didn’t get into the mail order business until the early ‘80s. Street tires were…well…street tires. We “scuffed them in” with a few autocross runs (or perhaps an enthusiastic romp around some street corners) to wear down the outer edges. “Race tires” were typically Goodyear Blue Streaks or Firestone Indy’s. In 1967, mounting race rubber on your car instantly moved you to a modified class. Tire wear ratings did not exist back then. “Sport sedan” was an edgy concept that came about when European cars like the BMW 1600 and Lotus Cortina offered sportscar levels of performance in a 4-seat format.
Until 1987, Maryland’s Blue Laws prohibited large stores from being open on Sunday, so autocrosses could be held in parking lots associated with places like Montgomery Mall. To be sure, today’s autocrosses are different. Malls are no longer available on Sunday. Cars are faster in all respects. The internet is everywhere. Enough specialized rubber exists to support myriad classes between stock and modified.
Still, the core of the sport is the same. So are the questions we get asked about it.
When people learn that we spend several hours baking in the sun for the privilege of three or four shots at a 60-second course, they typically look a little confused.
“It’s not much track time,” they say. “And they make you work too? Do you win any money? No? Wouldn’t you rather be on a racetrack where you can drive full-out, lap after lap, without having to slow down for cones?”
We generally answer much as we did 50 years ago: Autocrossing doesn’t put as much wear on a car as track events. You can run your daily driver if you want. Autocrossing builds the sort of skills that are useful for the bizarre situations encountered while driving on the street. Walking the course is good exercise. It’s a safe place to explore a car’s limits, away from public roads.
Yet none of that can explain the breathless grin you see on the face of a novice after his or her first successful pass through the course. Even experienced drivers occasionally find themselves shaking after a high-stakes run on a particularly challenging layout. Something pretty cool is going on; something more compelling than simply gaining driving skills or getting exercise.
Some would think it’s about winning. Finishing first is undeniably a good thing. Oddly, though, the fun of finishing first (while certainly energizing), is not the same as enjoying the sport for its own sake. With well-deserved admiration for the local and national champions of our region, the simple idea of “winning” does not explain why so many people participate. Somehow the sport has engaged their enthusiasm outside of the world of immediate competition. Thus, to butcher an oft quoted sports saying: While winning may be a “thing,” it is not the only thing.
I’ve noticed that some of us take special pride in car preparation—maximizing the machinery within the confines of a given class. It is frustrating to drive a car that won’t turn in for your carefully planned apex, or a car that happily seems to get there….only backwards. Success in the search for more power and traction is an end in itself. Of course, the better drivers seem to be able to get behind the wheel of pretty much anything and finish with times embarrassingly quicker than those achieved by the car’s owner.
Track drivers who started out as autocrossers are quick to credit autocross as a solid basis for other forms of driving. Timed events like hill climbs and rallycross are good examples. Putting it all together—personal skills, car preparation, and the excitement of competition can certainly result in a rush; a peak experience if you will.
I can’t help but wonder, though, if there is not something more going on—something that transcends the usual list of reasons we use to explain why we enjoy the sport.
Let’s look a little deeper.
Typically, when we try to explain autocrossing we focus on the experience; the complex interaction between driver, car, and pavement. We can expand our view to include the social atmosphere, especially the good people who somehow manage to get these events organized and running. There are days I drive home feeling that I didn’t do the course, the car, or my own ideals justice, but I’ve never regretted spending time as a member of the autocross community—best described as dedicated, supportive, and…well…maybe a little crazy. Still, to get to the root of what makes autocrossing unique, we have to start with what makes each course unique.
That would be the course designer.
Designing a course is a creative process. Sometimes I imagine it starts with an idea of what might be challenging, fun, tricky, or all of the above. However, the course is not completed until somebody gets into a car and sees how it drives. It’s amazing how moving a few cones a few feet here and there can change how a course flows. Fast and scary, or tight and technical, each course is an outgrowth of something in the designer’s imagination, refined by the experience and judgment of the pre-runner. Thus, unlike motorsports that rely on repeated laps of a road course, each autocross event starts with a creative spark.
Some of you know that I’m a classically trained musician. In my world, the course designer—the creator of what we do--is the composer. We, as musicians, do what we can to interpret the composition, adding our own sensibilities to the music. Interestingly, the term “Solo” seems to fit both music and autocross nicely. What we do is a personal effort, performed (if you will) in a public setting.
There is no objective measure to express the success of a musical performance. Even a count of right (vs. wrong) notes would say nothing about whether the audience and performer enjoyed their time together. Maybe that’s why musicians are so focused on their personal best—their ability to approach an unreachable ideal. While autocross results can be expressed in tiny increments of time, the process of striving for an ideal is the same.
In the late 1950’s Leonard Bernstein produced a series of Young Peoples Concerts in which he talked about different kinds of music. Music can be used to tell a story, support dance, accompany song, or support a movie. At the core of it, though, is something that simply exists for its own sake—music that was composed for the sole purpose of engaging the minds of the musicians and of the audience. Bernstein referred to that process as The Game of Notes.
If you dig down to the absolute core of autocrossing you will find a game of cones--a composition of pathways and problems created by a talented course designer, to be interpreted by drivers. I believe that term—game of cones—was used in association with the nationals recently.
I think there is more to it, though. When you talk to some of the more experienced drivers, the term “dance” comes up. Maybe there is fancy footwork involved, but I suspect the drivers are referring to a partnership with the car. That partnership, applied toward an ideal of bleeding edge performance, is, indeed, a dance.
I often have a great day, even though my times were not competitive, and even though I couldn’t see the top half of the PAX results with a pair of binoculars. Yet, with each run, my concentration reached farther forward. The g-loads increased. The engine revs climbed higher. The apexes passed closer, and the tires came nearer to parting company with the pavement.
Working your way toward an ideal is emotionally rewarding, intellectually satisfying, and (in a benign sense, of course) addictive. So, how do we express this to others?
We can’t.
Funny thing about the arts—especially the ones that involve motion and time: They are non-verbal. That’s why words fail us, and we fall back on rationalizations when asked about the sport. The truth is that for a relatively brief time autocrossing engages our minds, bodies, hopes, fears, joys and skills in a way that’s about as far from our daily routine as we can get.
Why do we do it? Perhaps that’s the wrong question. Better to ask: “What do we get from it?” The answer is not all that difficult. We do it for the sheer joy it brings us.
That’s how it was in 1967; that’s how it is today.
