Autocrossin'

My excitement is almost uncontainable. Why, you may ask? Well, I'm beside myself that you asked actually. The reason I'm so excited is because I am about to lose my virginal status in yet another car-related event: autocross!

Now, for those of you who aren't familiar, autocross is an ingenious way to get your racing thrills in a controlled and fairly low-speed environment. You can find these events all across these United States. Autocross is generally held in large parking lots that are island-free. There, a course is set up using hundreds of traffic cones. These courses are short, tight, and meant to test any car's handling characteristics to their limits.

Autocross is much like road racing in the sense that there aren't too many independent autocross events. Most are associated with clubs like the SCCA, which is sponsoring the autocross event I'm going to next week. Discovering these events is not difficult. Just search autocross and a city near you and you're sure to come up with something.

To a wannabe boy racer like myself, there are many enticing factors to autocross. First of all, it's cheap. Twenty dollars for a day consisting of six to ten runs of the course is really impossible to beat nowadays. Secondly, you can bring virtually any car, as long as it isn't extremely prone to rollover, of course. But most importantly, I feel like it is a Segway into all sorts of automotive racing. Autocross, as I've come to understand, is designed to push any car to the limits of its handling. This, in turn, teaches drivers important dynamics and, most importantly, car control.
So, ladies and gentlemen, check your oil, tighten your handbrakes, and make sure your tires are properly inflated. Then get out there and clip some cones!