Given all the bad press that "hoons" get, here's a interesting story, and one that really happened to me.
A car club I belong to held a motorkhana in January. For about $60 anyone who wanted to could come along and basically go nuts on a large tarmac pad and be totally covered by the $100 million in public liability insurance that we had by virtue of our CAMS permit. I acted as an offical at the event, taking care of the paperwork side of things and also doing some timekeeping on the day as well as setting up the courses.
The point of a motorkhana is to travel around a set of flags in a predetermined pattern faster than anyone else. Depending on how serious you are you either drive in a brisk but sensible manner and do well or you say "to hell with it" and you go nuts getting sideways. If you're really, really good you can get really sideways and still do well in the competition.
At about lunch time, after 2 hours of competition, we stopped proceedings so that we could set up some patterns for the 2nd half of the day. We noticed a dark green sedan that had just left the car park of the venue doing donuts just outside the entrance to the venue. The other officials and I thought, "what a dickhead" and went back to our task. After lunch things got back under way.
After a while I noticed a small commotion going on around the spectators mound. There was a police officer walking around in uniform asking people who owned the green sedan which was back in the car park! Eventually he found the young dude who was driving the car. The young dude got a talking to for at least an hour and we were almost at the stage of running side bets as to how many defect notices he'd get or even if he'd lose the car.
The venue we were using also doubled as one of the venues the ACT Police use for training. It turned out that while the young dude was having smokey circular fantasies one of the police who was there traning rang up for a little disco action.
I'm not entirely sure what happened afterwards to the young dude but he was allowed to drive away. The police officer stayed around to watch. As a good-will gesture, the driver of one of the more impressive cars entered approached the Clerk of Course and myself to see if we could offer the cop a ride in the competitors car as a good-will gesture and a show that not everyone was an idiot who didn't know the distinction between the public road and a competition area. I don't think the cop knew what he was in for as he'd sat himself down in a 20b turbo powered RX-7 driven by someome who can actually steer.
The point to this story, if there is one, is that the young dude in his green sedan could have paid $60 and "cut sick" all he wanted and had everyone cheering him on. Instead he hooked some 'nuts and got the book thrown at him 50m from safety. Hoons who did the right thing: 41; idiots: 1.
Postscript:
- The manager of the venue approached the Clerk of Course and I at the end of the day to signal his displeasure at our allowing the young dude to hook nuts at the entrance. We told him that (a) we had no idea who he was (true) and (b) that it was a public road.
- The 20bT RX-7 now has a new paint job. A motorkhana was run yesterday by the MG Car Club and they only charged $25 a head to enter (plus $20 if you didn't have a competition licence).
- I heard later that the young dude was actually driving his dad's car.
- More pics from the January Motorkhana at flickr.
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