While the car’s scenes cool kids were lapping Laguna Seca for GridLife last weekend, I was punting my project Civic around a defunct go-kart track in the Adirondacks. My speeds were low and the track surface was crustier than Corn Flakes, but the vibes were immaculate with trackside grilling, family hanging out in the pits, loads of time for runs, and the most chill racing launches you can imagine.
In a corner of the grassy field that serves as a landing strip for local Piper Cub enthusiasts, there’s a tight and twisty little track that was, supposedly, first paved in 1960-something for wheel-to-wheel go-kart racing. Sometime after that, the karting scene faded, but members of Tri-Vettes LTD and AMEC (the Adirondack Motorsports Enthusiast Club) have been using the track for autocross for years. A couple of folks I talked to even said they’d been racing there for decades. “I’ve got so many laps here. Hundreds,” said David Burnham, one of the group organizers and an exceedingly nice guy.
All this to say—this is not some ancient secret I discovered, it’s been part of the local motorsport scene for ages. But this weekend was my first time seeing it.
Between track-working duties, Burnham was driving a tube-frame racing vehicle with a Maserati V6 behind the pilot’s seat and a transaxle transmission that, I think, might have been out of a Citroën. Other cars in attendance ranged from nice sport compacts (a few Golf Rs and a WRX STI), some raccoon cars (a rough seventh-gen Civic, a noisy old MR2, a few crusty Miatas), and a few gorgeous Corvettes, including two gleaming C8s.
Through the online registration process, there were a few warnings that the track was bumpy. Having done hillclimbs in Vermont and a few parking-lot autocrosses in New York, I was undeterred. Pretty much every northeastern racing event I’ve done, outside of dedicated tracks like Palmer, has been a rough ride. From the satellite view on Google Maps, the track looked like a really neat little experience with a decently long straight, some elevation changes, and a large oval. “Looks good for drifting,” one of my buddies optimistically replied when I shared a map screenshot in a group chat.
When I rolled up, I was amused at the scale—the course was just barely wider than my little Honda, and the twisty section my buddy thought looked driftable was more of a shimmy than a slalom. Still, the map was great and there was a really fun-looking little hill into a sharp left which made for a lot more drama than your standard parking-lot autocross course.
But I did immediately understand why the folks running the event were offering to let people bail and get their money back if they didn’t like the look of the track surface. There were a few smooth sections (like, the length of one car), but otherwise, it was full of pits and potholes and a crumbling mixture of rock and tarmac. I set my Fortune Auto coilovers to their softest setting and prayed to the car gods as we did a recon run.
In an ideal world, you want to push hard, brake late, and hit the apex of every turn on track to carry as much speed as possible through laps. The go-kart track created two major obstacles to this. First, you have to pick between following the racing line and minimizing pothole impacts. Second, maneuvering room is almost non-existent, so simply keeping the tires out of the dirt requires a bit of brainpower. Finally, you’ve got your regular everyday track-running problems: Keeping yourself calm, learning the course, and getting a feel for how much power your car can carry through each turn.
The closest thing to track-capable tires I have right now are my 340-treadwear Firestone Firehawk Indy 500s, just 205mm wide. But I also have a limited-slip differential and less than 200 horsepower to the wheels. Still, the rubber yelled and screamed for mercy pretty much the whole way around the course once we got up to race pace.
Hard-driving front-drive cars is tough because the front axle has so much damn work to do. Obviously, a Civic’s front wheels have to steer and propel the car, and carry most of the machine’s weight. This is why FWD cars often want to understeer and slide to the outside of a turn; the front wheels become overtaxed and give up.
Eager to avoid repeating my understeer-induced wreck at the Burke Mountain Hillclimb, I ramped up my aggressiveness much more gradually. I was rewarded by pretty consistently shaving seconds off my times—not enough to win a coffee mug (the day’s trophies) but I got myself into 5th out of 10th place in my class: “two-wheel drive vehicles with 201-or-higher tire treadwear.” The first-place finisher there was a nearly new Corvette, so, I didn’t feel too bad about getting smoked.
Below, you can see one of my laps at pace. It’s not a how-to—I was just doing my best to keep the car on the pavement without ripping off a control arm on a crag. But it’s the best way to really see what it’s like to run a life-sized car around an old go-kart track. You can also get a good taste of the vibe by listening to the interaction between me and the starting guy:
The race was a fun social experience, but I really enjoyed the uniquely challenging course, too. It felt more like rallycross than autocross—a test of road-reading as well as car control. When the terrain is that intense, it introduces a major strategic element to how you pick your line.
We ran a flying start; a flagger would give you the go-ahead and then you could take off, but the timer didn’t actually start until you broke a laser a few meters further. That provided a little advantage to vehicles that need a beat to dig out from a stop. I was just trying to decide when to move to second gear as the first turn, about half of the oval, came up right away.
A twisty section after that forces you to keep your speed down, but the subsequent hill into a blind left was really fun and the straightaway was smooth enough, at least for me, to flat-foot it for a second. It couldn’t have been as long as a football field, only taking a moment to cross.
The braking zone up to the big 180-degree turn into the twisties was so beat up that I got full ABS engagement, even from a modest speed. There was a huge hole on the right before the road went left, so you had to either eat the pothole and majorly unsettle the car or hug the inside and apex early at low speed. I ended up trying to brake and get to the outside so I could hit the apex going faster, with pretty mediocre results.
I never got the hang of the little slalom. I managed to avoid hitting cones all day, but couldn’t get the car settled enough after that big turn to have the control I wanted through that section.
The long right back into the oval was a blast; a place to put down power, but the first apex after that was an absolute dragon’s den of rocks so I always ended up focusing on avoiding obstacles rather than keeping to a racing line.
Getting to run a second lap was rewarding, though. Oftentimes the thing I find most frustrating about autocross is how far apart your laps usually are. If you make a mistake on a turn but then don’t get to revisit it for another 20 minutes, it can be tough to improve. Here, though, I got another shot at everything without dropping momentum.
We did six total runs of two laps each; people were generally getting times between 70 and 90 seconds. My best of the day was an 81.698; the fastest cars were doing it in 76 seconds and change that day.
Lime Rock Park in Connecticut has a similar setup—a smaller, go-kart style track separate from its main course where you can do autocross laps. The terrain there is much smoother, but running on it costs a lot more. I’m hoping to give it a shot before deciding whether or not I need to pivot my racing vehicle to being more of an off-roader.
Meanwhile, my tough little Civic seems happy to keep taking whatever terrain I chuck it over. Even with stiff tires and coilover suspension, it’s remained a highly versatile toy car that manages to be a lot of fun even (especially) when it’s not going fast.