A ride 'round an American Oval track

[RocketmanX]

Thought you guys might like to see what it's like to make a lap in an Oval racer. This is one of my favorite tracks, Kalamazoo Speedway in Michigan, and is also one of the toughest and fastest tracks (very fast lap times for it's size) in the country! It's VERY roundy round and the straights are even curved, not typical of most ovals but very tough as it's very hard on the right side tires as you can imagine.

This isn't me but a fellow competitor, and his car is mishandling pretty bad. He should be running down on the line through the corners as you can see the other cars do. Doesn't seem very fast throught the onboard camera but you carry 115 mph right before letting off for the corner and use almost NO break at this track due to the large sweeping corners. That's what makes it fast, you're not on the gas hard and long, like most true ovals, but the car always feels like it's on the verge of spinning out here. It's VERY tough on the neck and body, no rest here

Kalamazoo High bandwidth Vid Clip

[XTR]

Bet its amazing... i refuse to install realplayer to view it though

Some people may think oval racing is easy/boring stuff... but from what i've heard its no easy matter, very hard on the body and mind. keep focused!

[RocketmanX]

Yeah, it's not easy, especially short tracks.
Imagine running as hard and as deep as you can in and out of the corner on the same right side tires every lap. No rest for your body going the same direction every lap. No room for mistakes either, just like any other form of racing. Our cars just turn to the left VERY well

I think oval racin got popular over here because way back when, with the way the hills and mountains are in the south, it was easier to put in an oval track on a smaller piece of ground than to try to make a road course through the hills. Just a lot more cost effective for the local hobby racers, which is where all forms of motorsport came from actually. If it weren't for the crazy old geezers of the early 21st centruy we wouldn't have the motorsport we do today. That's the same in Europe as it is in America. The form that became popular and accesible over here was the Stock car racing from the South, everyone had a car and that's all you needed back then to run a Grand National (as it was called then, now it's NASCAR) race.
You guys have Rallying and Grand Pix's 'cause of where the early hobbyists there started off doing. They just used the exisiting roadways to run races on. We didn't have that many roads back then so a lot of oval tracks were born, all you needed was a Bulldozer and a field and you had a racetrack

[Tumble]

Crikey - that track looks smaller than the oval we've got at Onchan, where the local nutters run stock cars & Formula 2s (the mad Cortina based things with huge wings on the roof ) and that things tiny..... motor in that car sounded sweet tho....... hmmm V8......