Dirt track racing is the perfect antidote to auction exhaustion

Precisely 89 Ferraris went up for sale under the auspices of Arizona Auction Week 2020 this past month. Many were pristine. I watched the high-performance Ferrari F50 slow roll at Gooding for $3,222,500. I drooled over the 1967 Ferrari 330 GTS as it sat center stage at the historic Arizona Biltmore and commanded a cool million. Were they as entertaining as the “Ferrari” I found 30 miles south of Scottsdale, the auction epicenter, racing at a local dirt track?

Of course not. Nothing beats watching a race car drifting around tight corners, full lock, slinging desert clay on the half-mile oval at Arizona Speedway.

To be clear, the dirt-drenched monster I saw on the oval is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a Ferrari. Under the hood is a 432-cubic-inch small-block Chevy engine. No V-12. No low-profile Pirellis wrapped over aluminum wheels. No independent suspension. Instead, this race car wears giant Hoosiers and sports a four-link suspension to help deliver more than 750 horses to the dirt below.

The car is known as a “late model.” Call it anything else, and race goers will look at you funny. This type of racing series got its name back in the day, when grassroots oval track racing permitted late-model production cars to race in their own series. For the longest time, the second-gen Camaro was the preferred late model on the dirt. Then spoilers grew, valences drooped, and late model production cars eventually morphed in the wedge-shaped race cars commonly seen today. Weapon of choice for power is still the small-block, though.

A modern late model is an amalgamation of sheet metal and plastic draped over an asymmetrical tube-built chassis. Dripping wet it only weighs 2300 pounds.

This late model just happens to have Ferrari decals on the nose cone. Most late models have domestic decals; Chevy Camaro, Ford Mustang, Cadillac CT6. Owner Thomas Hunziker proudly states, “This is the only Ferrari!”

Hunzicker is also the only Swiss late model driver. He and his wife Jennifer have been racing for eight years. “I used to be a craftsman, a builder,” he told me. “Then I became an office guy and needed an outlet.” Hunziker started snowmobiling with some friends. One of those friends noticed his sled control and offered him a ride in a circle track car. “I became fascinated with the mix of engineering and physical aspects in racing,” he said. The flying Swiss doubled down and bought his own race car. Hailing from Bend, Oregon, Hunzicker and his wife are regulars at dirt tracks across the Pacific and Mountain time zones.

“She’s a girl, so I love on her,” says wife Jennifer about her husband’s “Ferrari” race car, rubbing the front fender. “I tell her before every race, ‘you treat my husband good, you go fast.’”

The car must listen. Hunziker is indeed fast, frequently outperforming other competitors on a fraction of their budgets. “We only have one motor. Some of these guys have multiple back-up motors in their trailer.”

The couple made their trip down to Arizona Speedway for a week of fast fun in the San Tan Valley. The Wild West Shootout is an annual event for dirt fanatics. It’s a marquee event for the speedway that ushers in big names for six nights of racing in nine days.

Best of all, Shootout participants and fans only had a vague awareness of the bidding buzz in Scottsdale that week. Why should they care about exotic Ferraris fetching fat stacks just 30 miles north when there’s an exotic Faux-rrari right in their midst, wrangled by a passionate driver competing for the pure love of racing? You’d have a hard time convincing me they missed out on much.