Even when you’re not on track, motorsports should be an adventure | Articles

When the guard at the convenience store is not only wearing a bulletproof vest but also packing, you start to wonder about your choices leading up to that moment. Have you strayed into the wrong side of town? Should you be back in bed? What, exactly, am I doing here?

It was 3:15 in the morning–for me, at least, that time comes at the end of a day, not the start of one–and we were visiting the Circle K near our motel in Colorado Springs to load up on provi­sions: water, granola bars and fairly mediocre breakfast sandwiches. Call it an impulse buy, but I also grabbed a pom-pom hat embroidered with Colo­rado’s giant C logo.

Our destination: Pikes Peak for morn­ing practice.

Practice for Pikes Peak is different from, say, just about any other motors­ports event you’ve ever attended. The short version: Teams pre-run the week leading up to the event, but only a sec­tion of the course each day. And since the toll road remains open for business, everyone involved with the race has to leave the mountain by 9:00 so the paying public can take in the sights.

We arrived a little before 4:00 on that Friday morning to find dark­ness–along with a mass of cars. I saw Rupert’s Subaru WRX, so I knew we were in the right place–“we” being me, former, longtime Road & Track editor Andy Bornhop, and Miles Johnson, our chaperone from Hyundai.

Where to go? Only one way up the mountain, so we headed that way. The traffic got lighter the higher we got, but the weather didn’t: not just rain and fog but sideways rain and fog. I questioned if we should have driven past the truck that was kind of blocking the road. My travel companions made fun of me.

The two of them worked together to keep us between the white and yellow lines. Despite it being late June, we drove past snowbanks taller than a Wookiee.

Soon we arrived at our destination, the aptly named Devils Playground: about 13,000 feet up and the start for the day’s upper section practice. This is above the tree line. You can feel the altitude in your chest. My new cap represented $32.46 well spent.

We parked and listened to the wind howl past as it pushed around our Santa Fe. This was a very good idea, we told ourselves.

Around 6:00, the winds calmed. The fog eventually lifted. We watched Hyun­dai’s drivers make a single practice run.

That would be it for the day. By 9:00, the sun was out, the weather felt good. Warm sun and crisp air. Time for…