chino
Jan-26th-04, 10:17 am
Car racers take thrills from play to real life
BY ERIC HAND
ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE
In video games like Midnight Club Street Racing, drivers in souped up cars careen through city streets, terrorizing pedestrians while crashing into anything that gets in the way.
In Fayetteville last week, police say 18-year-old Thomas Webb raced a Toyota MR2 Spyder against 18-year-old William Wood’s Pontiac Firebird and crashed into a tree.
In the video game, cars keep going. Webb’s Toyota is totaled.
Northwest Arkansas, with its hills and curves, might seem poor street racing terrain. But police, some of them "reformed" street racers themselves, say there are plenty of short stretches of road where young men gather for midnight races that are fast, furious and potentially fatal.
Webb is lucky to be alive, said Fayetteville police Cpl. Jason Alvarado, who went to the crash scene at 4 p.m. Tuesday.
Witnesses driving north on Arkansas 265 told Alvarado that Webb of Fayetteville and Wood of Springdale passed by in the outside lane. They were going at least 85 mph, Alvarado said.
At the top of the hill, as the highway curved past Hyland Park Road, Webb lost control and careened into a tree, Alvarado said. The tree ripped the left front wheel off the car and sent it into a clockwise spin.
"It was also doing a pirouette on its tail. It did that twice before it landed upright," Alvarado said.
The car stopped about 300 feet from where it began to spin out of control. Webb was thrown from the convertible and into the road.
"Miraculously, all he suffered was some busted teeth, probably a concussion and his arms were scraped up," Alvarado said.
Wood returned to the crash scene and admitted to Alvarado that he knew Webb and that they were racing. Alvarado cited both with racing on the highway.
While Webb escaped with few physical injuries, both teens may suffer legal punishment.
Racing on the highway is the highest class of misdemeanor and is punishable by a $1,000 fine and up to a year in jail.
Fayetteville gets about a dozen racing cases a year, Fayetteville Prosecuting Attorney Casey Jones said.
If it’s a first-time offense and no one is hurt, Jones said he lets racers off with a fine.
"But if someone was harmed, we take that more seriously," Jones said.
CHECKERED FLAGS
People have been racing since the car’s invention.
Benton County sheriff’s office spokesman Doug Gay said the trend of racing on streets began in the 1950s, just as Hollywood began glamorizing it with movies like Rebel Without a Cause.
Even the Daytona 500 began in 1959 on a beach, not a racetrack.
Gay admitted that during a muscle-car period in the 1970s, he was involved with street racing in flat sections of Tulsa and Oklahoma City, where he grew up.
"I was very much into cars and knew how to make them go fast," he said.
He recalled the way they start.
"It’s a fairly spontaneous thing," he said. "You’re hanging around McDonald’s, and someone comes in with a fast car. There’s trash talking. Next thing you know, someone says, ‘Let’s go see how fast it is.’"
About a half-dozen people go to an empty stretch of road. Someone stands at the start. Someone judges at a finish line.
Today, careful street racers use scouts with cell phones at both ends, who watch for police. Other than the introduction of cell phones, street racing hasn’t changed much, Gay said.
Gay has heard about latenight races on I Street in Bentonville near the airport. He has seen the telltale marks of tires peeling out at the start.
"You’re not going to find it in more impoverished parts of the county. You find it’s a condition of a more affluent society — kids that are spending their money wholly on cars."
He said they’re clean cut, typically young men and not necessarily into drugs and alcohol.
"There’s a bit of science to it. They may not excel in anything else, but they do study," he said.
SOUPED UP CARS
The "gearheads" and "motorheads" Gay described might shop at Show-N-Go, a speed shop in Springdale.
A handwritten poster on the front door advertises an engine building class that begins in February.
Owner Allen Reed doesn’t condone street races but said there would be less of it if kids didn’t have to drive to Joplin, Mo., or Tulsa to race on a track. City governments in Northwest Arkansas, he said, have opposed attempts to build drag strips, which are sanctioned race-tracks with rules.
All that’s available in Northwest Arkansas is a small oval dirt track in south Fayetteville at the Thunder Valley Speedway.
Souping up a car is all about getting more fuel and air into the engine. Street racers who don’t have ready-made sports cars replace intake pipes with ones that funnel more cold air to the engine, Reed said. They use nitrous oxide, which gets more bang out of a buck worth of fuel.
Some even alter the car’s computer to raise the fuel-air mixture ratio.
"They’re taking their everyday transportation and trying to make it go as fast as they can," Reed said.
Most street races, Reed said, are nothing like the 15-minute, slow-motion sequences from movies like The Fast and the Furious.
They rarely last more than a quarter of a mile, he said.
But Reed doesn’t doubt the influence the movies have on motorheads; he can see it in his cash register receipts.
He said that after movies like Mad Max and Cannonball Run in the early 1980s there was a lapse, and kids lost interest in the car racing culture. Movies like 2001’s The Fast and the Furious rekindled interest in racing.
But Gay doesn’t blame the movies. Kids would race anyway.
"It’s just a thrill. It’s an adrenaline rush," he said. "Why do people jump out of perfectly good airplanes?"
:burnout: :wootburnout:
BY ERIC HAND
ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE
In video games like Midnight Club Street Racing, drivers in souped up cars careen through city streets, terrorizing pedestrians while crashing into anything that gets in the way.
In Fayetteville last week, police say 18-year-old Thomas Webb raced a Toyota MR2 Spyder against 18-year-old William Wood’s Pontiac Firebird and crashed into a tree.
In the video game, cars keep going. Webb’s Toyota is totaled.
Northwest Arkansas, with its hills and curves, might seem poor street racing terrain. But police, some of them "reformed" street racers themselves, say there are plenty of short stretches of road where young men gather for midnight races that are fast, furious and potentially fatal.
Webb is lucky to be alive, said Fayetteville police Cpl. Jason Alvarado, who went to the crash scene at 4 p.m. Tuesday.
Witnesses driving north on Arkansas 265 told Alvarado that Webb of Fayetteville and Wood of Springdale passed by in the outside lane. They were going at least 85 mph, Alvarado said.
At the top of the hill, as the highway curved past Hyland Park Road, Webb lost control and careened into a tree, Alvarado said. The tree ripped the left front wheel off the car and sent it into a clockwise spin.
"It was also doing a pirouette on its tail. It did that twice before it landed upright," Alvarado said.
The car stopped about 300 feet from where it began to spin out of control. Webb was thrown from the convertible and into the road.
"Miraculously, all he suffered was some busted teeth, probably a concussion and his arms were scraped up," Alvarado said.
Wood returned to the crash scene and admitted to Alvarado that he knew Webb and that they were racing. Alvarado cited both with racing on the highway.
While Webb escaped with few physical injuries, both teens may suffer legal punishment.
Racing on the highway is the highest class of misdemeanor and is punishable by a $1,000 fine and up to a year in jail.
Fayetteville gets about a dozen racing cases a year, Fayetteville Prosecuting Attorney Casey Jones said.
If it’s a first-time offense and no one is hurt, Jones said he lets racers off with a fine.
"But if someone was harmed, we take that more seriously," Jones said.
CHECKERED FLAGS
People have been racing since the car’s invention.
Benton County sheriff’s office spokesman Doug Gay said the trend of racing on streets began in the 1950s, just as Hollywood began glamorizing it with movies like Rebel Without a Cause.
Even the Daytona 500 began in 1959 on a beach, not a racetrack.
Gay admitted that during a muscle-car period in the 1970s, he was involved with street racing in flat sections of Tulsa and Oklahoma City, where he grew up.
"I was very much into cars and knew how to make them go fast," he said.
He recalled the way they start.
"It’s a fairly spontaneous thing," he said. "You’re hanging around McDonald’s, and someone comes in with a fast car. There’s trash talking. Next thing you know, someone says, ‘Let’s go see how fast it is.’"
About a half-dozen people go to an empty stretch of road. Someone stands at the start. Someone judges at a finish line.
Today, careful street racers use scouts with cell phones at both ends, who watch for police. Other than the introduction of cell phones, street racing hasn’t changed much, Gay said.
Gay has heard about latenight races on I Street in Bentonville near the airport. He has seen the telltale marks of tires peeling out at the start.
"You’re not going to find it in more impoverished parts of the county. You find it’s a condition of a more affluent society — kids that are spending their money wholly on cars."
He said they’re clean cut, typically young men and not necessarily into drugs and alcohol.
"There’s a bit of science to it. They may not excel in anything else, but they do study," he said.
SOUPED UP CARS
The "gearheads" and "motorheads" Gay described might shop at Show-N-Go, a speed shop in Springdale.
A handwritten poster on the front door advertises an engine building class that begins in February.
Owner Allen Reed doesn’t condone street races but said there would be less of it if kids didn’t have to drive to Joplin, Mo., or Tulsa to race on a track. City governments in Northwest Arkansas, he said, have opposed attempts to build drag strips, which are sanctioned race-tracks with rules.
All that’s available in Northwest Arkansas is a small oval dirt track in south Fayetteville at the Thunder Valley Speedway.
Souping up a car is all about getting more fuel and air into the engine. Street racers who don’t have ready-made sports cars replace intake pipes with ones that funnel more cold air to the engine, Reed said. They use nitrous oxide, which gets more bang out of a buck worth of fuel.
Some even alter the car’s computer to raise the fuel-air mixture ratio.
"They’re taking their everyday transportation and trying to make it go as fast as they can," Reed said.
Most street races, Reed said, are nothing like the 15-minute, slow-motion sequences from movies like The Fast and the Furious.
They rarely last more than a quarter of a mile, he said.
But Reed doesn’t doubt the influence the movies have on motorheads; he can see it in his cash register receipts.
He said that after movies like Mad Max and Cannonball Run in the early 1980s there was a lapse, and kids lost interest in the car racing culture. Movies like 2001’s The Fast and the Furious rekindled interest in racing.
But Gay doesn’t blame the movies. Kids would race anyway.
"It’s just a thrill. It’s an adrenaline rush," he said. "Why do people jump out of perfectly good airplanes?"
:burnout: :wootburnout: