Victory LAPS
THE PACE OF LIFE CAN BE SLOWER DOWN SOUTH, BUT IN THE DALLAS/FT. WORTH AREA, THINGS ARE SPEEDING UP.
BY SHERI BELL-REHWOLDT
THE RIGHT TRACK
The Texas Motor Speedway (www.texasmotorspeedway.com), situated 20 miles north of downtown Ft. Worth, is one of the “big four” in professional motor sport venues, a hallowed list that also includes Daytona International Speedway, Indianapolis Motor Speedway and Lowe’s Motor Speedway in Charlotte. The 1.5-mile oval track commands respect with its signature 24-degree high-banked corners. But this is also where Dale Earnhardt Jr. won his first NASCAR Cup race—and where some 200,000 fans converge to watch their favorite drivers. The frenzy begins in April, when, seemingly overnight, the vast expanse of grass, gravel and asphalt that makes up the Texas Motor Speedway complex teems with bodies and car parts. NASCAR fans first arrive for the O’Reilly 300 on April 5 and the Samsung 500 on April
6. They return on June 6 for the Sam’s Town 400k, a
NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Race, and stick around the next day for the Bombardier Learjet 550k, “America’s Original Nighttime IndyCar Series Race.”
GO AT YOUR OWN PACE
Race fever is palpable and contagious—and the sudden desire to zoom down hot asphalt at breakneck speeds seems perfectly reasonable. And why not? The Texas Driving Experience (www.texasdrivingexperience. com), a high-performance driving school that opened at the Texas Motor Speedway in 2004, gives you the opportunity to do just that.
Whether in your own auto or in one of the school’s 450-plus-horsepower Z06 Corvettes—decked out in eye-popping canary yellow—staff drivers with plenty of “seat time” will instruct you in the subtleties of speed and handling.
“You learn skills you can apply to everyday driving,” says owner Dawn Stokes, who expanded her company from an instructional driving education program for teenagers into the exhilarating—yet still educational— thrill ride it is today.
After some classroom instruction and a quick change into a black racing suit and heavy helmet, you’ll have the chance to zip around the speedway’s mile-long Infield Road Course—with an instructor coaching you from the passenger seat, of course. If you desire an even faster ride, let your instructor to take the wheel; before you know it, you’ll have an inkling of what it’s like to be Junior.
OFF-ROAD WARRIORS
The sights, sounds and smells of the racetrack elicit their own kind of adrenaline rush—one that can be appreciated with your favorite beverage in one hand, a program in the other, surrounded by thousands of your closest friends.
While everything is bigger in Texas, even the smaller tracks enjoy rabid fans. Take the Devil’s Bowl Speedway (www.devilsbowl. com), for example, located just east of downtown Dallas in Mesquite. It seats just 7,500, but between March and October, this half-mile, high-banked oval clay track offers the best in dirt racing—without the accompanying dust of other dirt-track races, so don’t worry about your allergies.
“We keep the clay nice and sticky with wet-downs on race days. Women do not like dust in their hair!” says co-owner Beverly Edwards. Since 1968 (Edwards and her husband Lanny took over the track in ’72), fans have flocked to what the Edwards call “the training track of the champions,” cheering drivers galloping past at 100 mph, many in winged sprint cars. It’s the place to catch the early moves of tomorrow’s racing superstars.
A REAL DRAG
Drivers who prefer the rush of blasting down a straight line can be found at the Texas Motorplex (www.texasmotorplex. com), located in Ennis, 35 miles north of Dallas. Here, before the half million fans who annually plunk into the 25,000-plus seats, professional drag racers routinely set records on its concrete quarter-mile track.
It’s nothing for drivers to reach 330 mph in less than five seconds. This kind of speed makes the track hotter than a habanero pepper—and the place to be on Friday nights, when amateurs put their personal vehicles to the test.
DREAM MACHINES
But the thrill of the racing scene isn’t just about speed, right? It’s the cars themselves. Sometimes these machines are so sweet that you ache for your own—but ownership is costly. That makes renting— say, a Dodge Viper or Lamborghini Gallardo—an option worth considering for those occasions when you need a vehicle so sleek it seems to be moving even when it’s sitting still.
Dallas/Ft. Worth has its share of luxury car rental dealers and car clubs, including the DFW Elite Car Club (www.dfwelitecarclub. com). Its slogan: “Why buy one when you can drive them all?” It operates like a time-share; pay a membership fee and get significant savings when you’re roaring down highways on the way to the big race in a Ferrari 360 Spider one weekend and a 1959 Mercedes 190SL two months later.
Whether you’re behind the wheel of one of these beauties or cheering as an impossibly fast stock car zooms past your seat, it’s easy—and thrilling—to live life in the Dallas/Ft. Worth fast lane.