The anticipation built as the front of the E-ticket line got closer and closer. Time and again, I watched the mischievous Subaru play hide and go seek through the clouds of rubber and dust in this industrial maze, yet the ride didn't seem to have a set track. The look on each rider's face as they exited was of fear, amazement and envy.
By the time Block pulled in for my ride, it was time for his third set of tires and a moment for the man and machine to cool their heels. Both the driver and the Crawford Performance-built car had been at this for almost two continuous hours. Yet even as I strapped in, Block leaned over with a friendly smile and shook my hand with no sign of fatigue. The man's a machine.
Block threw the dog box into first and rolled the car out of the pit at a snail's pace, slowly past the spectator and groupies and out around the back side of the waterfront warehouse. He looked over at me and gave the thumbs-up and in an instant, his usual relaxed congenial look vanished and was replaced with the intensity and focus of a driver.
We launched into the dusty, polished concrete floor of the vast empty warehouse like a go-kart on too small of a track. With a quick flick, Block set us into the first of many continuous slides centered around one of the hundreds of rusting iron roof pillars. Two loops and we had enough momentum to reverse our direction and glide sideways between another set of posts barely two car lengths apart. Car control is one thing, but this was just asking for it.
Just as shock subsided and the reality of the pillars started setting in, Block carried the momentum once again in another direction and shot us out of the opposing warehouse door. We exploded out into the setting sunlight and there, he finally dropped the hammer, blasting through second, third and then fourth gear for a hard run across the crumbling asphalt to the far edge of the waterfront.
On the far side, his hand slipped off the shifter and reached for the hydraulic rear brake lever. It's the thing we've all thought about doing while flying down the freeway but never did. Our Subaru was now rotating and sliding sideways in the original direction at 80 mph. By the time the car rotated almost 180 degrees and was sliding backward with the throttle still planted, we had scrubbed off just enough inertia to slingshot around a cone and barely clear the front bumper. Each tire clawed and tore into the loose, dusty tarmac and turned our backward reverse slide into forward motion again. I've been ice racing before and experienced similar maneuvers, but never at these speeds nor with the violence and smoke of these tires on tarmac.
Back up to speed, we made our way toward an RV parked arbitrarily in the middle of the dock. In a high-speed, asphalt-version of a Scandinavian flick, Block nosed the car away from the RV, just enough to flick the tail out for our AWD doughnut around the RV. Through the smoke and spinning surroundings, I could pick out the camera man on top of the RV spinning around and around, chasing us with the lens.
Just as the doughnuts starting feeling comfortable, Block again changed plans and dove for the aisles and rows of dormant rail cars. This whole time there wasn't a sensation of fear because the man obviously knew what he was doing. But as we worked past the first row of rail cars jumping over several sets of sunken rails into the main labyrinth, the sphincter pinched. We were sliding, turning and wailing between cars at more than 40 mph and suddenly there was no exit in the direction we were sliding. Block knew the two-car-wide exit, and again showed his mastery of conservation of momentum by reversing our slide in time to make the exit outside my field of view.
By David Pratte
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