Deep in Arizona there’s a track where historic NASCAR racers get to play – and Octane is invited to see the action
Words and photography Evan Klein
THE WILD WEST is alive and well in Havasu City, Arizona. It hits 120ºF in the summer and it costs 40 bucks to road-register your car. As you drive though the neighbourhoods you notice American flags on every porch and an RV, pick-up truck and boat in every drive. This must be what heaven’s like.
My friend Steve Foster owns ten NASCAR racers and he keeps them all at his house. I know what you’re thinking: I’d hate to be his neighbour, too. He’s invited me out to the Havasu 95 Speedway for the Saturday races. He’s running his NASCARs in an exhibition race, letting his friends drive, the only requirement being that they pay for gas and help him in getting the cars to the track and back home again.
Really, how hard could that be? Havasu is the kind of place where you literally can drive your NASCAR to the track on public roads and no-one says anything, so that’s what we do.
Everybody joins in to get the cars out of the house. We change oil, inflate some tyres, swap batteries. It takes a spray of starter fluid to get the ’74 Charger going. This Charger was Jim Vandiver’s car: it’s completely original, the motor was built by Maurice Petty to win races, and it’s got the same tyres as the day it left Daytona Speedway. The ground shakes as the engine erupts into life – the 426ci NASCAR hemi is a beast – Steve gets it to the street out front, and as a group we head over to the track. The plan is to get situated in the pits, top off the tanks and make sure everything’s OK. At 1pm we’ll go out for our practice session.
Why so many cars, Steve? ‘It’s funny, things just come to me. I picked up the 1968 Petty tribute car just for fun about four years ago from a guy down south who was racing it. I thought I’d fix it up and take it to cars and coffee. Then I found out that Havasu has a racetrack, and nobody was running vintage stock cars. I started going to the track and met the owner Bill Rozhon; he told me if I could get a few cars together he’d make space for us.
‘Then I got the Curtis Turner ’65 Galaxie, a ’52 Chevy from a racer in Georgia, a ’36 Chevy Modified, a ’54 Chevy dirt track car, and I had an old ’67 GTO hillclimb champion from the East
