Friday at the Track, getting behind the wheel at Summit Point Raceway
by Jeffrey B. Roth
SUMMIT POINT, W.Va. — Charles Houston loves his high-performance car.
There’s just one problem: If he drove the car at the speeds it’s capable of attaining, he’d likely pay the price when a car with blue and red flashing lights and a wailing siren pulled up behind him.
Charles had the car but no safe, legal opportunity to satisfy his need for speed, until he spent a day at Summit Point Raceway in Summit Point, W.Va.
Friday At The Track — FATT — was the outlet he’d been looking for.
“We started going to Summit Point when Charlie won a day at FATT in a silent auction in 2009,” said his wife, Emily. “Charlie had just gotten a Porsche Cayman and he went to drive, and I went to watch.”
As she looked on, a FATT driving instructor approached her and offered to take her for a spin on the racetrack during the lunch break. Emily, who teaches horseback riding and owns a small horse boarding business, said the ride “was my eye-opening experience as to what it was like to drive at those kinds of speeds.”
Emily, 57, who owns a Mazda Miata, caught the racing bug, just like her husband. Now they “are really regulars at FATT.”
Charles, 65, a retired business real estate developer, has owned a number of high-performance cars through the years. While he obeyed highway speed laws during his day-to-day driving, he yearned to put his cars through their paces.
“This was a chance for me to see what my car could do,” said Charles, who drives his 2014 Cayman at FATT events. “At the same time, it made me realize what I had to learn as a driver. Regular drivers have a lot of bad habits that make it less safe and less fun.”
The Houstons, who live near Leesburg, Va., are active by nature. While growing up in Augusta, Ga., Charles played tennis and golf, and later took up bicycling and scuba diving. Emily has skydived several times, he said.
“It’s not really thrill-seeking, it’s trying a lot of different things,” Charles said. “We did a lot of fox hunting around here, which is a lot more dangerous than the racetrack. Horses cause a lot more injuries by far.”
The emphasis at FATT is safety first, Charles said. Unlike in professional racing, FATT drivers allow other vehicles to pass in designated passing zones on the track — it’s more of a “gentleman’s race,” he said.
Driving high-performance cars on the racetrack is a skill the needs to be continually honed. However, when it comes to the mechanical maintenance of their cars, they “leave that to professionals. We don’t even know how to change the oil,” Emily said.
Emily enjoys the challenge and experience of high-performance driving. Racing on the track, with other cars coming close to hers, is an exhilarating experience. Over the years, they have made many friends at the track, and they enjoy the camaraderie of fellow speed enthusiasts.
When not driving their own cars, the couple gets professional driving training on wet-skid pads while behind the wheel of one of the many former police Ford Crown Victorias owned and maintained by Summit Point. Learning to control skids is a “skill that can save your life on the Beltway,” Charles said.
“Most people think they are safe drivers,” Charles said. “It makes you realize that if you are out sporting around in a car on nice roads, say in Carroll County, that some Bozo can come around the curb and you get clobbered. So it really gives you a degree of caution and situational awareness that makes regular driving safer and more fun.”
As a result of the training, rather than pushing the speed limit during normal highway driving, it tends “to make you drive slower, not because of fear of getting a ticket,” but because of increased awareness of driving safety, Charles said. “After spending a whole day at the track you are mentally exhausted from the concentration you have to use and for the next couple of weeks you have your fill of speed.”
High-performance driving is also physically exhausting, Emily said.
“There is a lot of reflex action — pulling really hard on the steering wheel on the turns; and fighting a lot of centrifugal forces,” Emily said. “It takes a lot of arm strength.”
Motorsports coordinator Chris White, who is in charge of racing programs at Summit Point, including Friday At The Track, became involved with the track in the 1990s. He became a volunteer instructor and later a paid instructor for the driving training programs, eventually working his way up to his current position.
FATT is an extremely popular program, White said, and draws drivers from West Virginia, Maryland, northern Virginia and southwestern Pennsylvania. Offered 10 to 20 times a year from March through November, two levels of the program are offered — Group One for novices and Group Two for advanced drivers.
Drivers interested in participating in the novice training group are encouraged to register months in advance. Each event is limited to about 74 cars, White said.
White said the typical 10-hour program begins at 8 a.m. and ends around 5 p.m. Participants drive their own street cars and receive classroom instruction, skid pad instruction in Summit Point cars and four 20-minutes sessions of in-car instruction in their own vehicles.
Cars must pass inspection by FATT mechanics before being allowed on one of the tracks. To move from Group One to Group Two, drivers must pass a certification test, White said.
Cars are categorized into three groups: street cars, closed-wheel and open-wheel competition-prepared cars. The cost is $250 per participant, and the event is held rain or shine.
In addition to FATT, the tracks and related facilities are leased by private racing groups, such as the Sports Car Club of America, the National Auto Sports Association and the Sports Car Vintage Racing Association. The facility also hosts high-speed go-kart and high-performance motorcycle events. Each year, special events are held, such as the Jefferson 500.
During a typical Friday, participants drive cars ranging from a Honda Civic to a Chevrolet Corvette, White said. Group One instruction includes 40- to 45-minute classroom sessions on driving basics.
“Everyone thinks they’re a good driver, until they get here,” White said. “Then they suddenly realize how much they don’t know.”
For more information on FATT and other racing programs at Summit Point Raceway, visit http://summitpoint-raceway.com.
Summit Point Raceway is more than a race track
Nestled in the eastern panhandle of West Virginia, Summit Point Raceway is most commonly associated with car racing.
But racing is only one aspect of the driving-related programs offered at Summit Point, said Lee Chewey, who supervises the Bill Scott Racing Inc. driving training programs, which includes an anti-terrorist security driving course, an evasive driving course and an accident avoidance course.
Summit Point Motorsports Park was established in 1970. In 1979, William H. “Bill” Scott, a world champion Formula Vee racer and driving instructor, bought the track.
During the 1960s, Scott raced open-wheeled Volkswagen bugs that had been converted to race cars. A driver with the Sports Car Club of America, Scott competed in national and international car racing competitions, Chewey said.
The 770-acre facility features three Le Mans-style road racing tracks: Summit Point, a two-mile track with 10 turns; the Jefferson Circuit, a 1.2 mile track with seven turns; and the Shenandoah Circuit, a 2.2-mile track with 22 turns.
“Scott had been here for a little while, when, as a result of all the problems in the world with terrorism, he realized this would be a good place to teach security driving,” Chewey said. “About 1976, the security defense driving program began.”
Now, more than 30 years later, BSR is recognized as a leader in security defense driver training. Throughout the year, BSR provides training to federal government personnel, to the military and to security agencies, Chewey said. The three-day course is offered monthly and includes training on topics ranging from “proactive security measures and reactive responses” to responding to attacks.
A two-day evasive driving course offers training in motorcade operations, convoys, tactical vehicle intervention, firearms, live-fire vehicle evacuations and other security-related skills.
In 1979, BSR opened its accident avoidance training program to the public, Chewey said. While basic driver’s education classes teach beginners the basics of driving, the accident avoidance program focuses on emergency situations.
The one-day course includes instruction on techniques such as high-speed avoidance maneuvers, vehicle control, threshold braking, braking in a turn, off-road recovery, skid control and driving with a vehicle malfunction.
The company employs six full-time and 25 part-time driving instructors. Several thousand students attend the security defense driving program each year.
“We furnish the cars,” Chewey said. “We drive in snow and ice, and we have different driving exercises. Most of the time is spend in a car with an instructor and three students.”
For more information on the driving programs offered at Summit Point, visit www.summitpoint-raceway.com.
