Street Racing

Street racing is an illegal sport that is growing popular at an alarming rate. Street racing is the concept of high performance automobliles racing on public roadways illegally. Individuals will take a basic car and tune it up to be very quick and very powerful. The idea of street racing originates from the legal sport of drag racing. Drag racing is an internationally recognized sport governed by the NHRA, the National Hot Rod Association. Drag racing consist of two drivers in separate cars lined up at a starting point on a quarter mile drag strip. The two cars are given a green light and race to the end of the quarter mile strip to see who finished the track in the shortest time. The whole thing is pretty simple and kind of dull to most people. Street racing is similar in concept but is completely different once acted out. Mainly street racing is non-supervised and illegal, also its not governed by set rules, there is no safety crew or precautions, there are no engine regulations, and the drivers are usually inexperienced. All these differences add together to make some serious thrills and some serious spills.

Illegal street racing has been around since cars were first mass produced back in the early 40's. The idea of widespread street racing didn't begin to get popular until early 1990. When it first started it was dominated by teenager's and young adults with high performance street cars. Street cars are your basic automobile sold to the general public with non-factory performance parts added by the owners. Drag racing is performed by cars that are non-street legal and look like nothing you would normally see driving down the road. Street racing gets its popularity from the idea that almost anybody can do it. All one has to do is own a moderate sports car, have a fondness for driving cars and fair amount of either stupidity or recklessness. The concept also works around the idea that some people don't have the time or money to use a legall track for auto racing. Trying to race a car in a legal racing circuit can be time consuming and very expensive. The earliest record of strewet racing goes back to the Brotherhood Raceway. The Brotherhood Raceway or Brotherhood for short was basically a quarter-mile drag strip that was put down on a closed off street, where street racers could go and find out their quarter-mile times and car speed for the price of nothing. This quarter-mile drag strip, located on Terminal Island, was used in an effort to keep racers off of public roadways. Around the mid-90s, the Brotherhood was closed down due to unsupervised accidents, forcing street racers to take their racing to another legalized track, or to the streets and highways. The Brotherhood was an early attempt at allowing the average guy or girl to race their car without having to be a professional and spend to much time or money.

I first got invlovled in street racing when I was 15 years old. I hung out with a slightly older crowd and most of my friends had cars and were racing them on the streets. I specifically bought my first car with the idea of racing it. I was an average guy, kid, without little money and a lot of stupidity. Street racing is alluring because its competitive, risky, illegal, and one hell of a thrill. When a basketball player gets that glorious feeling from stealing the ball, running down the court and scoring the a three pointer to take the lead, a driver can find the same in racing. I think one of the biggest thrills of strret racing is the control issue. When a driver is in his car and racing down the street he is in control of 2000 pounds accelerating up to 100 miles an hour at a very fast rate. Maybe my control issue was that I lacked control of some aspects of my life but for a short period pf time I was in control of something very big and powerful.

When street racing first became popular the dominate cars on the market were Mazda, Honda, and Toyota. These automobile manufactures made sport cars that were not too expensive of the dealer lot, and even a lot cheaper bought used. At the same time these cars generally had a lot of extra space in the engine compartment allowing for street racers to add performance parts. Performance parts are usually built by companies that have no affiliation with the actual automobile manufacturer. Each car company does have its own performance parts designed for their cars but these are usually much more expensive than the nopn affiliated companies. Toyota owns TRD, Toyota Racing Development, a company that at one point was separate from Toyota until Toyota acquired

TRD in the late 80's and now sells their trucks and sports cars with the TRD lable. Every car engine is different but usually they all work on the same concept and only vary in size and power. An engine that has no performance modifications is called stock in the racing scene. The basic parts of stock engines that are modified be would be the air filter, air intake, exhaust system, computer chip, turbo and supercharged pressure systems, and most mods after this point actually involve serious engine work. The parts I just listed are usually very easy to replace or install and are pretty basic performance upgrades. Other parts of the car can be upgraded for performance, the suspension system, the tires, the strut bars and sway bars, and the transmission. All of these help in the over handling and control of an automobile.

To get an idea of the illegal street racing scene we can look at the fast and the furious movie. This is a movie about the import scene where people have fast cars, and lots of money. The producers also depicted street racers are thieves, thugs, killers, and hi-jackers. Also in the movie, they have a quarter-mile race, which seems like it is two to three miles long. The makers of the movie even with the help of legal, well-known drag racers blew the whole street racing scene of out proportion, having cars all line up a certain way, people polishing their cars, girls showing off and having numerous cars lining up to race, and showing them race for a lot of money and for their cars. In real street racing, most of that does not happen. When comparing the real street racing scene to that is depicted in the movie, the movie is a little exaggerated. What the movie shows to be the street racing scene is close to the real thing except times ten. If there was any betting going on at the races, it wasn't shown and flaunted in front of everyone as it was in the movie. (Fontana)

When it comes to street racing, people are basically allowed to use any type of engine/car set-up that they want, and race whoever they want. Some match-ups are uneven, some are even, it all depends on what the person has done to his or her car. It is hard to sort out the old-fashioned street racers from the new, because all the imitations have money