Yesterday, I found myself at Seekonk Speedway, a very small oval paved track in Seekonk, MA, which resides right on the MA/RI border. My wife and I took our 4yo nephew to a local monster truck event there, and to my surprise, there was another attraction on the bill: the East Coast Towing & Recovery Spectator Drags.
Now, I've heard stories from the locals on what this is, and it basically goes like this:
It's a racing series that happens from time to time during local events at the Seekonk Speedway, and the ruleset is simple: pay $40, bring your "street-legal" car along with your license to the track, and race one-on-one with other people on the oval. Races are a single lap, and whoever wins moves on. There are points associated with winning races, and the most points at the end of the season wins the season and some sort of prize/trophy, etc. As far as I can tell, there are zero rules governing the cars, other than they have to be street cars, and they can run/drive/not leak fluids all over the place.
In practice, it results in a menagerie of random stuff showing up to race:
Most stuff in the pic is V8 Chevy-powered, but other stuff showed up, too. If you were wondering where approximately half the running 3rd Gen F-Bodies in southern New England were yesterday, they were on this track. The others were probably up at New England Dragway or at a local car show.
That said, there were some interesting rides in attendance:
This 1983-86 Thunderbird looked great and was 5.0-powered judging by the noises it was making. It was not very fast, though. At least it looked cool!
That's a heavily modded Subaru Outback XT and a Ford SVT Contour. That poor Contour has to be one of the last ones left, and it was vastly outclassed by everything else there. The announcers were ragging on it the whole time. That Outback is the series leader right now, believe it or not.
Street machine wagons always do it for me, and this Malibu was no exception. It had massive tires and hooked really well.
A down and dirty teal GMT400 wearing Corvette salad shooters? Put that right in my veins! This one was quick, too.
This one was billed as a '49 Ford F100, but I have no idea what was going on chassis or engine-wise. It ruled and was fast.
It also spun out at the end of the race trying to overcorrect in the last turn. And that's the other thing: collisions can and DO happen. This spinout just hurt his pride. He owned it and did a donut for the crowd after.
DSMs are all but extinct up here, so when I saw this clean 1st Gen Talon wearing the best color combo of white with the black roof, my heart was happy. This one was mean, easily dusting this Golf R and a nasty 4th Gen Camaro, too.
I love a good sleeper, and this Squarebody C10 Custom Deluxe was the business. I watched this thing... all of this thing... out-corner and overpower a couple of really nasty F-Bodies. It snuck around the last turn on one on the inside and I was NOT expecting that. No one in the building was, either! The place went nuts!
And then there's this S10. This is the clear star of the show, and the local favorite/hero. I've heard many, many stories about this guy and how fast this Blazer is. I heard a blowoff valve, so I'm guessing a turbo LS is under the hood. Put it this way: he would launch hard and idle the rest of the way around the track about 8 car lengths in front of whatever lined up against him.
Other than those, there were tons of C4 Vettes, F-Bodies, a turbo Civic coupe, VW stuff, and even a late model Audi S4. Everyone but the S10 drove to the event on the street with no trailer. This is as "grassroots" as you can get. Down and dirty racing at its finest. For this type of stuff, I still prefer the quarter mile, but this was really interesting to watch. Even my nephew, who wanted to see the monster trucks, told me that this was better!
Do they do this near you?
