Four Cylinder Racing
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
The Sunday Drivers class was invented to bring new people into the world of Auto Racing while keeping the investment to a minimum. The average cost of building one of these cars is about $500, more depending on how far you want to go with your car.
The rules basically are that the car is a four cylinder, front wheel drive. The engine is stock for that type of vehicle and non-turbo charged. Suspension modifications are not allowed. To guard against this, the cars are turned around after a caution to race in the opposite direction.
The most common car on the track is a Honda. There are also Toyotas, Dodges, Fords, Saturns, and basically anything you would see on the streets everyday. My brother races a 1987 Honda Civic Hatchback. I am part of the pit crew.
Every summer, between May 24 and September 10, the whole family is forced to live, eat, sleep racing. Maybe force is too strong a word, as we rather enjoy it. Every winter the weekends are spent building and rebuilding the car for the following season and rehashing the previous season to make ourselves more competitive.
A lot of people are surprised to see an attractive female (so I'm told) in the pits changing tires covered in grease. That's what happens when your father is a mechanic. Some men tend to get a little upset when they realize that I can change an alternator in about 5 minutes or that I know what an alternator is and where to find it.
Now that I have inserted this little rant I can return to the topic.
We race on a 1/4 mile oval in Riverglade, New Brunswick. Our class of racing, Sunday Drivers, requires that the driver not have more than 2 years of racing experience. Some of them don't even have a licence yet. After two years of Sunday Drivers, you move up to Sunday Warriors. This class not only includes graduates of the SD class but drivers of 8 cylinder cars that would like a change. We are moving the Warriors class this season.
Even though we race in a beginners class, there is a lot of work that goes into making it to the track every Sunday. I wouldn't miss a minute of it!