The Pyramid of Speed

[ragdoll]

http://www.nsxfiles.com/images/s2k_laguna_triangle_1.jpg
The Bottom Level of the Pyramid of Speed


Street Racers:
These are the yahoos that you see trying to do smoky burnouts on city streets. They look around for deserted industrial areas so they can "Race" each other in a straight line. They think NOS is cool. They think "Fast and Furious" is a shoe-in for an Oscar, both for best picture, best actor, and best documentary. They post on various Internet BBS boards short stories talking about their "Kills", where they went 0-60 faster than some other car on busy city streets.

Favorite type of woman: Any sixteen year old female who hangs out at those Import car shows and will show some skin, never mind that her skin is pimply.

Favorite Magazine: Import Tuner. Sport Compact Car. Turbo Digest. NOS World.


http://www.nsxfiles.com/images/s2k_laguna_triangle_2.jpg
Level 2 of the Pyramid of Speed

Freeway Racers:
Next to the bottom are these guys. They frown upon Street Racers, thinking that Street Racers are 0-80 mph wimps. Instead, Freeway Racers think that they are cool, as they go 120+ mph and weave in and out of traffic on the highway like a bunch of morons on crystal meth. The problem is that these boneheads have spent money to make their car a little faster and a little noisier than usual, but they forgot one thing: they are going at dangerously high speeds and they have itty bitty front brakes, small rear drum brakes, and they have never attended a go-fast driving school. They forgot the Stop-Fast parts when they modified their cars. Not good when Sally Homemaker in her 6000 lbs SUV makes a lane change at 55 mph without signaling and without looking for cars coming up on her at triple digit speeds. They post on various BBS boards about their "Kills", where they passed some guy driving a more expensive car at 110 mph, saying that they knew that "Name_your_Car" drivers can't drive worth a crap.

Favorite type of woman: Any female that is impressed by them driving 100 mph with a beer in their hand, a joint in the other, and no seat belt on. Needless to say, these guys are usually dateless.

Favorite magazine: High Times. Mad Magazine.


http://www.nsxfiles.com/images/s2k_laguna_triangle_3.jpg
Level 3 of the Pyramid of Speed

1/4 Mile Drag Racers
Next up are the 1/4 mile drag racers. These guys are at least smart enough to take their cars to a formal race track where there are rules, safety regulations, and ambulances for when they crash because they can't figure out how to drive in a straight line. They look down upon the Freeway "Racers" and Street "Racers" as a bunch of immature folks who don't have enough sense to take their need for speed to their local 1/4 mile drag strip. Instead, these 1/4 mile geeks spend their life trying to break the 12 second barrier in their souped up street cars. Sometimes they might even get four runs in a day, and at 13 seconds a run, this means they spent the whole day at the track for 52 seconds of "racing" fun. Kinda like spending $200 on a dinner date, and having premature ejaculation at the dinner table.

Favorite type of woman: Any female that has teeth.

Favorite magazine: Hot Rod, Car Craft, Hemi World.


http://www.nsxfiles.com/images/s2k_laguna_triangle_4.jpg
Level 4 of the Pyramid of Speed

Autocrossers
Next, we have the autocrossers, a special breed among themselves. They frown on the illegal freeway and street racers as wreckless morons. They laugh at the 1/4 mile Drag Racers, as those goons can only go fast in a straight line. Hell, you can probably get a monkey or an 90 year old grandmother than can stomp on the gas and make three shifts in 12 seconds without crashing. Reaction speed of drag racers on the start? Shit....reaction speed to autocrossers is learning a 15 turn autocross course the first time by driving out there and not hitting any freaking cones, and making some dramatic left-right-left turns without spinning out (despite the fact that they are going at a blazing 35 mph!)

Favorite type of woman: A female who has the whole day to burn, and can stand a safety cone upright, as they sucker them into being cone-corner workers.

Favorite magazine: The SCCA's SportsCar magazine and the SCCA FastTrack, so they can obey the Rule Nazi's and read and interpret drivel such as this. (http://www.nsxfiles.com/images/s2k_laguna_autocross_paper.jpg) These guys actually like reading a book of rules about how to go around cones at 35 mph!

http://www.nsxfiles.com/images/s2k_laguna_triangle_5.jpg
Level 5 of the Pyramid of Speed

Time Trialers
Next, we have the Time Trialers, meaning the people that who take their car to road racing courses. Also known as "lapping days". These people are thrown on a road racing track with about 20 other cars, and they are only allowed to pass in the straightaways. They look down upon the illegal Street "Racers" and Freeway "Racers" for obvious reasons. They laugh at the drag racers who can only go in the straight line. They shake their head at the autocrossers, as why would someone want to spend all day in a parking lot to do five runs on a 15 turn course lined with safety cones, and each run only lasts 60 seconds and you never get out of 2nd gear? Hell, at at Time Trial event or lapping day, you may get 60+ laps around a world famous road course, which is 30 times more "seat time" than you get in autocrossing! Plus, in autocrossing, they may disallow your time because your tire is a quarter inch too wide, or you put a different brake pad on, or your springs on your car are a half inch too low. Autocross is racing, but racing Taliban-style, with 1000's of rules of what you can do or not do.

Favorite type of woman: Females who think that their man is a "Racer", since his car actually made it to the pavement of a race track. Never mind that the dude spun his car four times in one day and got dust all over the interior of the car. She is convinced that she dates "Macho Racer".

Favorite Magazine: Road and Track, Car and Driver, Automobile, Motor Trend.

[ragdoll]

http://www.nsxfiles.com/images/s2k_laguna_triangle_7.jpg
The Top Level of the Pyramid of Speed

Wheel-to-Wheel Racers
The Wheel-to-Wheel racers are at the top of the pyramid. They have big heads, big egos, they think they are cool, and they can be tremendously condescending. Some even have the gall to have their own website touting their latest "racing adventures". They think Street Racers are ricockulous, and that the Fast and The Furious is the second stupidest movie they ever seen, with Driven being the stupidest. Freeway racers are viewed as unskilled morons, but Wheel-to-Wheel racers have been known to occasionally "bait" the Freeway Racers into following them through an offramp at triple digits speeds, and when the Freeway Racer suddenly realizes that he can't control his car that fast in a turn, the Freeway Racer panics, hits the brakes hard while turning, and ends up spinning and crashing into the guard rail, while the Wheel-to-Wheel racer looks in his rear view mirror, and calmly puts another mark on his dashboard, keeping score of "reverse-kills". 1/4 Mile Drag racers are viewed as unskilled folks who can only shift up, and cannot figure out how to master a proper heel-and-toe downshift without grinding the tranny.

Autocrossers are viewed as crossdressers who think that danger and excitement is narrowly missing a plastic safety cone by two inches at 35 mph, and live by a rule book about their car specs that is bigger than the Bible. There is a lot of risk and danger in autocrossing.....hell, if you screw up, you could end up with a couple of plastic safety cones tangled up in your front grill. Does Michael Schumacher autocross? Would he ever spend time dodging safety cones? Did Kimi Raikonen make it to Formula One as a nineteen year old by driving solo in a parking lot? Hell no, Kimi made the leap to Formula One because he was the karting champ of Finland, doing wheel-to-wheel shifter karts, not by driving around stationary cones. If autocross was really exciting, you would see the Cone Dodger's National Championships on ESPN or Speedvision. But no use having an autocross on TV because, uh...quite frankly, no one cares.....

Time trialers are viewed as chumps that can't figure out how to control their car well enough to maneuver in between two other cars at 100 mph in a turn without causing a three car wreck. For it is only the Wheel-To-Wheel racer that put their car within inches of an apex at 110 mph, can brake within inches of their target braking point at 140 mph at the last possible instant without locking up the brakes into ABS or flat spotting tires, that can be within inches of another car's door going into a 100+ mph turn and fighting for position on the pavement, and can control understeer or oversteer with the pedal to the metal coming out of an apex and using the last inch of pavement exiting out of a turn to keep the car from spinning off into the dirt or into surrounding cement walls. If a wheel-to-wheel racer makes a mistake, his car will probably be severely wrecked, other cars could be wrecked, and he could potentially take out half the cars entered in the event with him going into Turn 1 at the start of a race.

Favorite type of women: Hot, sexy women who know that all the other "racers" in the lower levels of the Pyramid of Speed are all really just "wanna-be-wheel-to-wheel racers". A woman with a good stock portfolio is highly desirable, because Wheel-to-Wheel racing is ahhh.....about five times more expensive than any other level on the Pyramid, as your car will break down more, the parts you need to go fast are more expensive, you blow through rear tires every weekend, you probably have to have a truck and trailer to tow the car, you need an extensive pit crew help to keep the car running that that you over modified in your thermonuclear war with other people to get to the top of the podium.

Favorite Magazine: Autoweek, as each week they have in depth coverage of the only true sport left in the world, which is Formula One wheel-to-wheel racing. Everything else in life is just a game......

Where are you?

[Dizmm]

ra ra ra repost!

[devlish]

Autocross is racing, but racing Taliban-style, with 1000's of rules of what you can do or not do.

i bet VPT liked this line!!! hahaha

[TomKat]

Go to a wheel to wheel club race some time and watch. I think you will reclass them down with the street racers.

[WhiteEightBall]

^ Kind of what I was thinking. Just a bunch of rich guys wanting to destroy their cars on a track instead of on the street...

[Dizmm]

dont have to be rich to race wheel to wheel. most of the wheel to wheel cars are piss slow. all you need is a slow honda or miata thats all gutted.

[TomKat]

Wheel to wheel racing is still very expensive even if you have a really cheap car to race.

Now add in your health insurance will not cover you if something happens while racing. Life insurance also.

[EVILUTION]

I'm considering an SCCA membership. They seem to sponsor more events and draw a different crowd.

[IROC]

You forgot the "organ donors" = motorcycles. LOL

[IROC]

Perfect class for SCCA would be Trans-Am. June 17th -20th at Road America and September 3rd -5th at Brainerd. :cool:

[TomKat]

I'm considering an SCCA membership. They seem to sponsor more events and draw a different crowd.

$80 for membership. Events are more expensive, way less track time, and farther away. And if you like politics this would be your group.

[EVILUTION]

^ Its $45 for military.... I'll save more than that on a set of Hoosiers (SCCA discount).

[TomKat]

Well you better sign up then.

[VPT]

i bet VPT liked this line!!! hahaha




Can't laugh because its funny, I laugh because its true. All those rules and the system is more unfair than when they started.

[Dizmm]

Wheel to wheel racing is still very expensive even if you have a really cheap car to race.

Now add in your health insurance will not cover you if something happens while racing. Life insurance also.

its not much more expensive than the average guy that does 3-5 open track days a year with a $15-25k car.

If i would have kept that full race prelude, and sold all my other cars (except for my 2.5rs of course), i could wheel to wheel race for around the same invested.

[TomKat]

Yes, but at the end of the year (if all went well) you'd still have a $15k - $25k car.

Of course you'd have the experience.

[SgtRauksauff]

You forgot the part about how wheel-to-wheel racers don't realize that RALLY drivers take all that, and add unstable changing surfaces, on a route that they usually only get to see only ONCE, at the time of the race itself.
None of this, "I'm going to brake a little deeper on turn 7 next time, and dive inside that miata because he's consistently taking the outside line.". More like, "I better take this corner properly the first time, otherwise I'll end up at the bottom of this cliff."

I would say that it's the pyramid of ignorance, not of speed. Rally isn't on there, because Rally drivers, for the most part, are not ignorant. Which must be why they aren't on there.....

--sarge

[05Saab]

I would say that it's the pyramid of ignorance, not of speed.

--sarge


Yeah, speed doesn't seem to play a big part in this. Most people get faster than normal Auto-x speeds in all other categories. But yes, attitude (or ignorance) seems much more appropriate.

[TomKat]

+1 Sarge.

[Mr. Fuji]

Im with Sarge

[abot316]

+3 Sarge