Spectator drags are the equivalent of amateur night at the local wrestling joint. Pay a few bucks hoping to win a few bucks, hop into the ring with a bunch of people who have no business being there (you included) and fight it out until someone is crowned the winner. More often than not, the end result is mangled metal, shattered glass, and maybe a couple of guys fighting it out on the starting line. But occasionally, real racing can go down, and that’s what you’ll see here. This is Beech Ridge, a small track in Maine, and the catalog for tonight’s event is pretty spread out. There’s a few Mustangs, ranging from clapped out Fox bodies to a S550-chassis Bullitt car that we wouldn’t have let anywhere near the gate onto the track. There’s a Scion tC and a Subaru WRX that is stanced over D-window wheels. There’s a Camaro/Firebird combination third-gen, a C6 Corvette, one of the more pissed-off Audis we can remember hearing, and two G-bodies that look built to kill. The Monte Carlo looks mean, but we have to tip our hat to the Olds Cutlass that looks and sounds like a street brawler. Nevermind the pair of Crown Victorias, the wallowing Ford Explorer, the drift-happy Infiniti, the hopeless diesel-powered VW Rabbit, and others. Spoiler alert: there’s no fist fights. But there is some solid driving, some wild near-misses and some mangled metal.
What’s that quote…”Don’t race something you aren’t afraid to shove off of a cliff”? Words never better suited than here at the spectator drags.
