Speed demons: Autocross enthusiasts race the clock at the Hoover Met

When most people hear about Hoover Metropolitan Stadium, the first thing they think about is baseball.

After all, it was the home for the Birmingham Barons for 25 years and has been the location of the SEC Baseball Tournament for 22 years.

But there’s a sound coming from the stadium these days that’s quite different than the crack of a bat. It’s the sound of roaring engines and screeching tires.

About once a month, on a Saturday or Sunday, gearheads and motorheads from across the metro area and beyond come rolling into the Hoover Met parking lot for autocross competitions.

They set up courses with cones in the expansive parking lot and see who can make it through the courses with the fastest times.

“We’re very careful not to call it racing” because the cars aren’t going on the course at the same time, said Cameron Hall, an autocross co-chairman for the Alabama region of the Sports Car Club of America, which organizes the events.

But the drivers are racing against the clock, and it can be quite thrilling for them.

ADRENALINE RUSH

Nate McCrary, a 28-year-old auto mechanic from Hueytown, said he loves the adrenaline rush. This is his second year to do autocross, and he has competed in at least 15 events, he said.

“A friend of mine invited me and put me in the passenger seat, and I was hooked,” McCrary said.

He took a 1965 Chevrolet Corvair that his father gave him and rebuilt it so he could compete in it, rebuilding the engine, transmission and brakes. He likes old cars, and it makes him proud that he can get out there in an old car he rebuilt and still be competitive with the newer models, he said.

“It’d probably be sitting in a field rotting away if I hadn’t found this sport,” he said.

The autocross events draw mostly sports cars, but the Sports Car Club of America allows any vehicle as long as it is wider than it is tall, Hall said. That rules out most trucks and sport-utility vehicles, but a Nissan Frontier pickup made the cut by 3 inches, he said.

At any given event, drivers usually get to go through the course six or eight times, Hall said. They’re also required to spend about half their time helping work the course as a volunteer.

The cost is $50 per event, or $45 for drivers with full membership in the club, which costs $75 per year for individuals and $95 per year for a family. There usually are about eight competition days per year, between February and November and a “test and tune” day to work out the kinks in cars in January, Hall said.

Drivers can compete in as many events as they like. Awards are given out at each event, and drivers earn points to see who does the best over the course of the whole season. An awards banquet is held in January.

The course is laid out differently each month, Hall said.

FINDING A HOME

The Sports Car Club of America has held its competitions at a variety of locations, including the Birmingham Race Course, Barber Motorsports Park, Midpond Raceway in Columbiana and the infield of the Talladega Superspeedway.

Barber got to be too expensive to rent, and Talladega was too far away for the majority of those interested, Hall said.

They have used the parking lot at Hoover Metropolitan Stadium for several years, but in 2016, an autocross event put on by another group drew noise complaints from neighbors, and all such events were shut down, Hall said.

The club couldn’t find another place to compete and had to cancel half of its 2016 season and the entire 2017 season, he said. A policy change allowed the autocross events to return in 2018.

However, with the opening of the Finley Center, the car club had to reduce the length of its course because if it were to take up the entire parking lot, it would have to pay to rent out the Finley Center, too, and that cost is too great, Hall said.

So the course was reduced from a roughly 90-second course to a roughly 30-second course, he said.

Miles Crabbe, a 27-year-old software engineer from Madison who is in his fifth year of autocross, said the old 90-second course at the Hoover Met was “a thing of beauty.”

With that course, the club had as many as 140 competitors at an event, including 20 or so drivers who competed at national events, Crabbe said. Now, there normally are 50 to 60 competitors, but the autocross program is in a rebuilding mode after being dormant for 1½ years, Hall said.

Crabbe, who said he has competed in close to 100 autocross events, said the sealed asphalt parking lot is actually the worst surface for this kind of competition because the oil in the sealant makes it difficult for tires to stick well. Concrete is the best surface, he said.

‘MORE ADDICTIVE THAN COCAINE’

But it’s still a challenge and “a whole bunch of fun,” he said.

He grew up in Hueytown, and NASCAR is his first love, but he enjoys most any kind of motorsports, he said. Autocross is the entry level for motorsports, he said, and he got his first taste of it in college. His primary car now is a 2014 Mustang. He has spent $30,000 on his car.

“It’s not cheap,” Crabbe said. “The only thing more expensive than racing is airplanes and cocaine, but this is more addictive than cocaine.”

However, while he has spent a lot of money, other people bring $500 cars out there to compete, he said.

It’s a challenging sport because you’re constantly having to balance the car on its tires. It’s different than driving on an oval track because with all the maneuvering “you have to know what you’re doing three steps ahead of where you are,” he said.

However, the fastest car doesn’t always win, Crabbe said. “You can beat a fast car if the driver is thinking faster than another driver.”

The last autocross event being put on this year by the Alabama region of the Sports Car Club of America is scheduled for Nov. 24, but the club plans to return to the Hoover Met parking lot in 2020, Hall said.

For more information, go to alscca.net.