Junior
New member
ya your break down there is very accurate, but the 1 for me that sewed it up was that if I go to a backyard race and win, I have no feeling of accomplishment at all. it's like "so my race-prepped sled beat a bunch of sleds that are set-up for the trail, big deal." so it's a lot of work and no satisfaction at the end of the day. And if I where ever to lose, it'd be absolutely humiliating. To me it's all about the challenge of seeing how far I can push myself and my equipment (which is myself by proxy since most of it is stuff that I designed and built) and seeing where I stack up against the best. But that's just me, alot of people are happy just to jump on a sled and run down the track. And alot of people aren't in it for the competition, they're in it to win. I can honestly say that I don't even mind losing, so long as I feel that I did the best that I could, and was just out-performed. If I did everything in my power and ran as fast as I could in the conditions, and learned something, I'm happy, no matter where I placed. That level of competition just wasn't ever present at backyard stuff tho.
Not to mention that in my experience, backyard races will ALWAYS be won by locals, if you travel more than an hour to get to the backyard race, you have 0 chance of winning, as even if you do, they'll tear you down and find something wrong (there or not) to disqualify you, 'cause they want to see a local guy winning. Not to mention being into $50 for gaskets and 2 hours of tear down and 3 of reassembly when you get home, all 'cause they don't like being beaten by somebody that's not on the same postal route as them.
I'm not trying to say noone should run backyard drags tho, you gotta do what makes you happy, but these are the reasons that I wasn't ever happy doing it.
Not to mention that in my experience, backyard races will ALWAYS be won by locals, if you travel more than an hour to get to the backyard race, you have 0 chance of winning, as even if you do, they'll tear you down and find something wrong (there or not) to disqualify you, 'cause they want to see a local guy winning. Not to mention being into $50 for gaskets and 2 hours of tear down and 3 of reassembly when you get home, all 'cause they don't like being beaten by somebody that's not on the same postal route as them.
I'm not trying to say noone should run backyard drags tho, you gotta do what makes you happy, but these are the reasons that I wasn't ever happy doing it.