This was a great take off from Doug Hayashi's website www.pulpracing.com. I personally couldn't have put it any better...and I still go a little way to go before I'm on the top =)
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.
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.
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.
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 read
and interpret drivel such as this. These guys actually like reading a book
of rules about how to go around cones at 35 mph!
Level 5 of
the Pyramid of Speed
Time Trialers and Track event people: (I'M HERE)
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, Option, Car boy, Best motoring
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......
So the question remains: Where do
you fit on the Pyramid of Speed? For all you people who are already hooked
on "Go-Fast Crack Pipe", just bite the bullet, throw a roll cage in your
car, learn how to control your car
a little better, and let's battle it out on the top level of the Pyramid,
and let's look down upon all the other "pseudo-racers" from our perch in
the
Pyramid.....