I attended the ChumpCar World Series event at the Virginia International Raceway a few weeks ago, and had a great time. For those of you who don’t know what the CCWS is, in short, it’s a race for cars valued at $500 or less (other than the roll cage and other mandatory safety equipment). For every $10 you go over $500, you are docked a lap. So you can show up with a $2,000 car and race, but have no chance of winning. It’s also worth pointing out that it’s for cars valued at $500, not that you paid $500 for. They don’t care if you paid $500 for a BMW, they care if you can find at least 10 BMW’s in similar conditions for that price in varied geographic searches. They are serious about keeping the playing field level.

Qais and I went, and though we only spent 4 or 5 hours there, it has whet his appetite for more racing, and it makes me realize how much fun it really is. Of course, the CCWS race I went to was 14 hours, so we watched it start and left when the boy got tired. We still got to see a few cars get sideways on the track in the rain, and saw a number of cars that came into the infield after blowing fuel lines and other important bits. I of course came with my camera in tow, and tried to get good shots of each car that was rounding the track. The best of those shots went up on flickr.

Looking at the ChumpCar event calendar, there is a 24 hour endurance race at VIR on August 11th and 12th. I’m planning on going and camping at the track. Anyone else want to join me?