When the winter months approach in Kentucky, NCM Motorsports Park doesn’t shut down. In fact, this year they went for broke. On the south side of the road course, you have the festive show of lights they are calling Twinkle At The Track, so if you’re all about feeling the holiday season, Christmas, Santa, snow and all of that fun stuff, you can pack the car full and go take a slow lap through some beautiful lights. Or, there’s the other option that takes place the first Saturday of each month from now until March: King of the Heap. Basic premise: $1,000 beaters getting absolutely caned in the name of saving off cabin fever and keeping driving skills in check. We’ve gone to just about every event they’ve held, and the track record…well, ours has been kind of grim, if we’re being honest. The very first event we blew up the LT-1 in a 1994 Camaro so hard that they named the oil-stained corner of the autocross after me. Then there was the Crown Victoria that kind-of, sort-of lived, the borrowed SVT Contour that was so light that it was scary, the Cadillac limo we broke in half, and the Dirty Cougar, which survived, but needed enough work that we weren’t able to finish it in time for the first event. That’s all right, though…we were still going to drop in to see the action. And we will have the Mercury ready for the next round.
And action, there was plenty of. There was the Toyota Celica whose engine did a repeat of the Camaro’s trick…you know, loud knocking followed by an open door in the block? Yep, that happened. Then the Honda Accord that MCR Tuning brought to play with started packing it up. Apparently, a Beijing Breathing Apparatus, a candy-cane shaped exhaust system and a buttload of the really good stuff from NCM’s race fuel pumps was enough to get the block a’knocking, and once that was heard, driver Kyle Gouvas decided that there was only one proper solution…and that involved the rev limiter, followed by a Hiroshima cloud that signaled that the little Honda that tried, had died. Then there was last year’s overall champion, the Dang Bros. team, and the Marlboro-liveried Cavalier that should’ve been dead last year. Some suspension modifications were made and now the Cavi was hiking it’s rear leg around corners like a prepped track car, high in the air. Even the SVT Contour had returned, but by the time I had made it to the track the input shaft on the five-speed had snapped, putting the car that reeked of fresh lime green paint and wet cement back on the trailer. Why cement? The Contour had been lightened so much that the handling bordered on non-existent, so the team decided to pull a chapter out of the Dukes of Hazzard’s playbook, leveling off the weight balance with cement. They just mixed it too thin and didn’t give it time to set up!
We’ll have plenty of photos from the first round of the Battle of the Beaters in Kentucky, but for now check out some of the action by clicking a photo below!
