The street connecting Pinellas Park's Sunshine Speedway to Ulmerton Road isn't used for drag racing. But it looks like it could be, arrow-straight and lined with cars parked at a right angle to it on either side. The narrow strip of old asphalt bisects horse pasture and Florida scrub for what seems like half a mile, thinning toward some gnashing glow off in the dark.
Okay, so it's not really half a mile. It just feels that way when you walk it alone in a hard, windy drizzle, flask banging against your leg in a conspicuously laden cargo pocket, wondering exactly what the hell you're in for. I'm no elitist, but I've never been to a stock-car track, either. I'd be lying if I said visions of being beaten for sport by a battalion of mean-eyed men with beer-fueled tempers and ponytails pulled through the backs of their NASCAR caps aren't occasionally flitting through my head. I get similar flashes of reverse xenophobia at Goth clubs, Home Depot and wherever a group of people is ostentatiously doing a shit-load of drugs, as well; there's just something precarious about walking into some foreign religion's cathedral during communion, you know?
The Sunshine Speedway turns out to be an imposing house of worship, a complex oasis of blinding light, frenzied exhortation and unregulated automotive noise plunked down in the middle of nowhere, yet two minutes from everything. The Speedway features a 1/4-mile semi-banked track, full-service pit, concession area and bleacher seating for, seriously, 6,000 fans. And while its featured schedule of car races enjoys a loyal draw, the track's beloved figure-8 school bus races fill those 6,000 seats most consistently.
Not even tonight's increasingly inclement weather makes too much of a dent in the attendance. As both the St. Petersburg Times and Bonnie Hill, who owns the track with husband Frank, have pointed out, thunderstorms and summer bus races often come as a package deal.
"That one can be run rain or shine," says Bonnie during a post-race phoner, adding with a laugh, "it just makes it more interesting when it rains."
After momentarily boggling at the $15 ticket price, I negotiate the covered, inclined concession mall, where you can buy anything NASCAR-related, including pastel hot pants emblazoned with Jeff Gordon's number and autograph, and where the six-dollar "Big Beer" is almost big enough to justify its price. A short concrete stairway opens onto the arena, where I'm treated to the spectacle of a staggeringly wide cross-section of mostly white humanity. Over 4,000 people, many clad in plastic ponchos but most just irritated by the rain, alternate between sitting impatiently and bolting to their feet — just like in church! — as the action on the track ensues.
The bus race is usually staged at the end of the evening's schedule; for some reason, stock-car drivers tend to bitch about racing a track littered with oversized debris. Tonight, however, it's been moved up in the name of giving the people what they want before the weather gets even worse. As I reach the stairs, a dozen or so dully painted old school buses tagged with numbers and sponsors like Pete's Towing, Country Harvest Restaurant and Gulf Coast Surf & Skate — one all-black dark horse displays the marvelous slogan "Deaf Pride!" — complete the second of their 25 laps. Unsure where to find a seat, I stop right there and gawk through the mesh barricade at the voluminous spectacle. So do about 50 others, creating a constant bottleneck. The Florida Highway Patrol officers hired as security attempt to clear the herd, gesturing people toward the bleachers in either direction. This works for about two minutes, every two minutes.
The buses must cross the intersection at the figure-8's center twice in each lap, so the possibility of collision is pretty much constant. They grind against one another as they careen through the corners, shedding fenders and cowlings like reptile scales at impressively suicidal speeds for such lumbering deathtraps.
An announcer attempts to call the action over a scratchy PA; given the weather, crowd and ceaseless engine backfire, he might as well be speaking Farsi.
The crowd oohs as one through each near-miss at the track's center, anticipation fading to disappointment like the Doppler Effect. Their enthusiasm is quickly rewarded, however, when the Pete's Towing bus, piloted by veteran racer Charlie Wyberg, gets smacked hard near the engine as he crosses the intersection and goes over on its driver's side. Everyone is instantly on his feet. The response is deafening, Kiss Alive! loud, Super-Bowl loud, standing-next-to-a-fighter-jet loud. The other buses are flagged down, while ambulances, tow trucks and techs on foot swarm the track as Wyberg, unhurt, extricates himself from his safety harness.
The rain worsens. A couple hundred people decide they've had their money's worth, and funnel down the stairs in a brief torrent. I find a seat next to a couple of amped-up, punked-out teenagers and continue my battle to completely drain my Big Beer before it completely refills with rainwater.
There's a definite difference between standing at the entrance and being one with the crowd. You get sucked in so completely that the shift is barely perceptible. The first attempt to right Wyberg's bus fails; we stand and cheer. Wyberg's bus is finally righted; we stand, cheer and look around at each other like goggle-eyed idiots — "Did you see that? It's normal again! Fuck yeah!" And when, scarcely 10 minutes later, Wyberg is checked by another bus and slams into the barricade not 30 feet from where I'm sitting, sending shrapnel into the mesh and ending his part in the race, we gleefully go apeshit.
Fuck, yeah.
By now, only about half of the buses are still running and the track is littered with enough parts that one of the racers could probably scrape 'em together and build him or herself a backup. As the weather shows tentative signs of letting up, a little Clearwater firefighter, Cameron Hill, son of Speedway proprietors Bonnie and Frank, completes the 25th lap for his fourth figure-8 win. He earns a six-foot trophy and $1,000 bucks for his trouble. I check the time on my phone and am astounded to find that the whole thing lasted about a half-hour.
Almost the second that Hill's name is called, the crowd begins clogging the arena's exits. The announcer, now decipherable, entreats them to stick around for the rest of the bill, repeatedly explaining that "we've checked the radar, and this is just a small cell of thunderstorms quickly passing over." But tonight's patrons have either had their fill of rain or, as their temperament thus far suggests, were just here for the school bus race in the first place. Ten minutes later, the bleachers are almost empty; five minutes after that, the rest of the schedule is struck and rain checks are issued.
As the entire reason I'm here centered on a friend's desire to actually be in the race (he and his buddies ended up unable to compete), I can't help but wonder exactly what the criteria are for potential drivers. Bonnie Hill provides the answer for me a couple of days later:
"Get a bus," she tells me. "That's all you have to do."
Scott Harrell can be reached at 813-248-8888, ext. 109, or by e-mail at scott.harrell@weeklyplanet.com.
This article appears in Jul 24-30, 2003.