This bings back memories - Industrial Rd in Springfield, Possum Point, and even the infamous V Street downtown!

I think I was sixteen, the first time I went down to the races and miss the days of innocence, leaning on the fenders and catching a good race. There were a few bad ones, but never like the insanity of last week!

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Shadowy Racing Culture Extends Across the Region

Washington Post

By Nick Miroff
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 24, 2008; Page C01

The Burger King on Route 28 near the Manassas Airport has little to suggest its status as a street-racing landmark. It has Whoppers on the menu, fries in the fryer and new Cheesy Tots enlarged to softball size on a poster above the register.

But along the walls of the dining area in the back, a chrome-spangled gallery stretches out, jammed with hundreds of photographs -- muscle cars, classic cars, race cars. Customers have submitted them over the years, marking the restaurant and its parking lot as one of the region's premier meeting places for drivers who want to show off their vehicles -- or challenge someone to race.

After eight spectators were killed watching an illegal street race in Prince George's County last weekend, attention has been focused on the racing culture in the southern part of Maryland. But the phenomenon is regionwide. Possum Point in Dumfries, Edsall Road in Springfield, River Road in Potomac and V Street NE in the District are just some of the sites that have doubled as drag strips over the years, selected by racers who fancy wide, flat roadways in deserted industrial areas or open highways where no one is likely to summon police. They meet and set up races in such places as the Burger King and other late-night haunts.

But in the phantom world of the region's racing scene, location matters less and less, as text messaging and Internet-enabled cellphones allow racers to quickly converge and vanish just as fast. Hustlers, hotheaded teens and undercover officers are all just as likely to show up for the action these days, along with spectators of any ethnic background or age group.

"Burger King is every weekend when it's decent weather," said Prince William County police Sgt. Flip Harrover, who described the scene outside Manassas. Officers patrol the area but don't have the resources to maintain a constant presence, he said, and there's nothing illegal about hanging out in a restaurant parking lot. "We can't stop them from gathering," Harrover said.

Wary of plainclothes police, racers often convene in parking areas to meet other drivers, size up their vehicles and place bets. From there, they depart to a more secluded location to settle their contest where the crowds -- and the police -- aren't watching.

On some nights, especially in summer, cars will descend on the Manassas area from as far away as West Virginia and Pennsylvania. The result is a carnival atmosphere, though many drivers are simply there to show off classic cars and talk shop. "It's just car enthusiasts bringing their cars in to commune," said Woody Terry, a general manager for the company that owns the Burger King. He said he had no knowledge of street racing in the area.

But police and racers say the friendly car show often develops into something else. As the night wears on and the older crowd thins out, anticipation builds for the races. A single contest might have thousands of dollars behind it, racers say, and the fastest vehicles -- souped-up hatchbacks with 600-horsepower engines and booster tanks of compressed nitrous oxide -- can reach speeds of 150 mph in a 10-second race. At the edgiest events, a poker-like psychology reigns as drivers "sandbag" to conceal the power of their modified engines by holding back or intentionally losing a few races, only to blow away their opponents later when the stakes are highest. It is a game with little room for error.

After several years of declining fatalities, accident data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration show that the number of people killed nationwide in street races increased from 111 to 150 -- or 35 percent -- from 2005 to 2006, the last year for which data are available.

Before the deaths last weekend, racing fatalities in the region were steady or largely declining. Between 2001 and 2006, 18 people in the District, Virginia and Maryland were killed in illegal races, highway safety data show.

The events are seasonal as well as cyclical, affected by weather and shifting rivalries. In Maryland, racers occasionally meet at the Montrose Crossing shopping center on Rockville Pike in Montgomery County, and videos posted on sites such as MySpace and YouTube show street races in Gaithersburg and Potomac.

In Frederick County, which has rural roads similar to those in Southern Maryland, racers often gather on Lily Pons Road, south of Buckeystown and east of Buckeystown Pike, and on Hoffman Seachrist Road, south of Woodsboro, according to Cpl. Jennifer Bailey, Frederick County sheriff's spokeswoman.

By all accounts, racing has been going on in the Washington region as long as anyone can remember. Retired Prince George's Circuit Judge Vincent Femia said illegal contests took place on the Capital Beltway in the 1960s when the road was under construction. Femia, a former prosecutor, recalled a Maryland state trooper telling him he once ordered the drawbridge on the Wilson Bridge opened as racers sped in its direction.

"That got them to stop," he said.

Then came the 2001 movie "The Fast and the Furious," depicting the street-racing culture of Los Angeles. The popularity of illegal racing exploded, and since then, a flood of video games, magazines and other films has added to the fetish, racing fans and police say.

"We had kids leaving the movie theaters and heading out to race" in 2001, said Fairfax County police Capt. Shawn Bennett, who gives presentations to high school students and police departments about the county's anti-racing program.

Using helicopters, undercover officers and night-vision surveillance, officers have hammered the county's underground racing scene with enforcement operations since 2001, issuing hundreds of citations that, in some cases, resulted in jail time.

"When the next movie came out in 2003 ["2 Fast 2 Furious"], we ramped up enforcement again," Bennett said.

Racing participants confirmed Fairfax County's harsh reputation. "They're the worst police ever," said Kevin Inge, 30, of Woodbridge, who said he began racing on V Street NE in the District when he was 16. Traffic-slowing measures are now in place to prevent racing on V Street.

Inge, a co-owner of Quality Tire Custom Auto Shop in Woodbridge, said street racing has rapidly evolved in recent years with new technology. He and some of his friends were among the first local street racers to begin modifying imported cars in the late 1990s -- often Hondas or Acuras, dramatically increasing engine combustion and acceleration. For $10,000 to $15,000, a garden-variety Civic can be converted into a street-racing beast, he explained.

"You can beat Vipers, Corvettes," Inge said.

To improve performance, racers will remove a car's air-conditioning unit, interior panels and even the back seats and then gas up with 116-octane racing fuel, available at specialty shops for $15 a gallon or more. The alterations do little to shore up the safety features of a car that's built for fuel-efficient trips to the grocery store, not traveling at breakneck speeds. But every ounce of extra weight counts when there's so much money on the line.

"I've seen guys bet $5,000 or $6,000 up in Baltimore," said Kellen Maddox, 27, who said he won a race there for $1,200 in his turbocharged Honda Civic EX sedan several years ago.

Maddox, a Fredericksburg resident who grew up in Alexandria, said his vehicle was once known to police and racers in the area for its rocket power and supercilious license plate, EXOWNZU (as in, EX owns you). The car is now immortalized in a video on the racing Web site http://streetfire.net that has been viewed nearly 170,000 times.

"If there's two guys and two cars, there's going to be a race somewhere," he said.

That's one reason last weekend's crash has renewed efforts to get drivers off the streets and onto racetracks.

"This isn't anything new," said Hayne Dominick, general manager of Old Dominion Speedway in Manassas. On Wednesday nights, the track charges drivers $15 to race on the drag strip as much as they want. "It's a matter of education, and getting [drivers] to channel their interests to racetracks, where it's supervised and there is safety equipment," he said.

"Then they can get it out of their systems."

Staff writers Rosalind S. Helderman, Megan Greenwell, Jenna Johnson and Nelson Hernandez contributed to this report.

Ahh, good old racing by the FCPS security center. If they hear it going on, they send a School Security cop to tell you to stop.