(Words by Jake Nicolas) – I’ll never remember exactly how I found out about the Maxton Mile. It could have been from a local drag racing regular at the auto parts store, or from my boss at the time who had a neglected Nova on drag pack in one bay of his shop. It might have even been from a racer on their way through my small college town. Regardless, one day by chance I found myself driving my 1998 Eclipse down a small dirt path. Almost immediately I was retreating in reverse as an ambulance appeared heading the opposite way. The bright lights seemed to slide through the woods in a chilling, surreal way until they hit the tarmac road past the entrance, a small barely marked cut in the tree. The siren hit and the diesel growled as it accelerated away. It was a shocking reminder, one I will never forget, that motorsports are inherently dangerous.
Rolling up to a concrete pad, or what remained of a concrete pad, I paid my ten dollars and parked behind a guy in a Jaguar S Type R, a car I had lusted after for years but rarely saw. The cars weren’t the only wonder before my eyes that day. Most people sitting on an airplane think the runway is rough but you would have to see this track to understand it. There is not just one line through it but several, none of them straight. I thought the pit road was bad, with foot deep potholes and insane 3 inch step bumps, but the runway was certainly a sight to behold. There has been a report of at least one person kissing the runway at Ohio’s Wilmington Air Park, presumably after realizing it was still a runway.
Not long after my arrival the sky burst and what seemed to be hundreds of people scampered into trailers, motorhomes, and tents. I ducked under the tent of a man with a Cobalt SS and we had a short discussion. As it soon became clear that the racing was done for the day we said our goodbyes and I left feeling completely electrified. My subsequent trips up that small gravel road were occasionally weird but always interesting. I’ve included a series of four more stories, each stuck in my head years later. I remember these stories in vivid Technicolor, stuck indelibly in my head despite problems with memory loss. They are the memories I go back to time and time again when I think of racing.
Have you ever seen a C4 Corvette go two hundred miles per hour? I almost did. I can’t forget the sound the car made just after the traps as the driver deployed his laundry. The parachute popped open and, with an almighty bang, the rear bumper of the car flipped up leaving the rest of the Chevy continuing down the track. In short order the driver was pulling up right next to me in impound with his brakes on fire. A few bemused spectators, myself included, pointed this out to him. His response gave me perspective on why we were there, “Who gives a shit? I set a record.” he said flippantly while walking to the trailer to get his slip.
That isn’t the only sound I’ll remember forever from the Maxton Mile. I heard a bike, which sounded like a Formula 1 car, on its way down the track, while perusing the pits. I bent over to look at a bike, in this case the “Zon Pan Chopper”, and suddenly someone grabbed the fade knob and turned it violently counter clockwise. In an instant, the scream turned much mellower, and the noise that was bearing down on me was receding faster than I could imagine on the other side. I knew it was fast. It had to be. The call went out from the tower. The speed is completely lost on me, but the sound from the bike never will be. The voice in the tower was so underwhelming compared to the bike’s scream that I rounded his speed to 260.
Mike Reichen is one cool cat. He shows up now and again in a Camaro or his pretty much famous ‘World’s Fastest Evo’. It’s a seriously quick Evo II which you could be forgiven for mistaking as a Mitsubishi Mirage, the car it was based on. It’s gone into the two hundred-thirty mile per hour range but my lasting memory of it will always be playing with kitty litter for an hour after he created several bay windows in the side of his 4G63 engine block a quarter mile or so into his run. That was when I really learned just how skilled these drivers were. It was my first close up of the track, at Maxton.
Perhaps the saddest memory that I have of Maxton happened on a sunny but windy day. I rode on the back of a truck picking up the cones that delineated the course. It went very quickly but no one seemed to be in a hurry. I asked Keith Turk where the next race would be but he couldn’t tell me. No one had any idea. The airport wasn’t inviting the ECTA back for the next season, and while they would eventually find a new home at the Wilmington Air Park in Ohio, we were all left wondering what was going to happen. As the trailers rolled away it was very somber with nothing but the strong wind rolling across the vast expanse of Maxton as quiet fell.
I paid ten dollars to attend my first event and it took me from a guy who liked cars to a man obsessed. That initial journey has cost me probably fifty grand or more by this point, all in the pursuit of speed. Without the completely unique experience I gained at Maxton I doubt very seriously that I’d be the same man I am today. I’m still working on a car, now a 2000 Corvette I want to take road racing, and once I have a cage I will go out, I will make that pass. Time has put a lot of distance between me and the last event at Maxton but I will get my licenses. I made that promise to myself years ago and it’s one that I intend to keep.
Today, the ECTA finds itself in a similar situation to my last trip to Maxton. Wilmington, Ohio is no longer hosting the circus that is land speed racing but some day someone will make that first pass on a new track. And they will set a record, it’s almost guaranteed. Maybe a kid will find his lot in life there. I sure did.
That 260 run was glorious wasn’t it. I was bent over the fender of my truck deciding if a little more timing was in order. Good times.