McQueen For A Day

Ever dream of being an endurance race-car driver without spending millions? ChumpCar and 24 Hours of LeMons let amateur gearheads play the stock car market at 120 mph.

- Randall Lane

Those with cash and a need for speed have traditionally followed one of two paths: Spend six figures on a car with an immaculate engine that they can show off in a garage or while idling in weekend traffic (the Lamborghini option), or spend five figures on an endless series of professional driving lessons that let you tear up a track in someone else’s supercar (the Bondurant option).

I’m pursuing a third way. Over the past decade, a handful of amateur racing circuits have popped up that allow anyone with a driver’s license to channel their inner Steve McQueen or Paul Newman in their own race cars, on the most storied tracks in America, at speeds as fast as they dare. The two most popular, and comically named, organizations—ChumpCar (a play on the now-defunct Champ Car series) and 24 Hours of LeMons (a nod to the legendary endurance race at Le Mans)—have cost mandates. Chump limits expenditures based on a points scale, while LeMons caps your car purchase price at a flat $500.

As with a fixer-upper home, though, that’s just the ante. Sure, two of my oldest friends—Bill Rowan, a military-trained pilot, and Rob Mecarini, the president of an ocean surveying firm—found a mid-engine 1989 Toyota MR-2 for a couple hundred bucks, but that $500 spending cap doesn’t cover a litany of safety features.

We needed a fire suppression system in case of combustion, a frame cage, a reinforced roof, helmet harnesses and mesh-covered windows in case of a roll, and a driver’s seat that’s closer to a contoured piece of body armor. Before adding these things, we removed everything else (the simple math of auto racing: bigger engine + lighter weight = faster car). Suddenly, we had a $10,000 race car.