Ordinary cars and drivers have extraordinary adventures in open road racing, which also serves as a creative entry point into motorsports.
 

Nevada's Silver State Classic Challenge is held on public roads, and competitors can bring just about anything and go as fast as they want. In fact, the last few world records for the fastest speed ever driven on a public road have been set at this event. The current record is an average of 219.643 mph, set in 2017 by Robert Allyn and David Bauer. Yet most participants in the Silver State Classic are driving street-legal cars with a goal of averaging between 90 and 125 mph across more than 90 miles of state highway.

The Silver State Classic is one of a small group of similar events taking place in Nevada, Texas, and Nebraska. But the sport of open road racing, as they call it, has the potential to spread and expand as enthusiasts from coast to coast are exposed to the appeal of these grassroots events. They attract hundreds of entrants every year.

Organizing an event where the rulebook is thin and the variety of cars entered is wide can be a challenge in itself. It takes a real enthusiast like Felton "Blue" Offutt to chair an event like this and bring it to reality every year. We met Offutt at the Sandhills Open Road Challenge in Nebraska, and he later took the time to explain open road racing for the PRI audience.

PRI: What is open road racing? Can you give us a definition and tell us how it's different from other motorsports?

Offutt: Open road racing is technically a time-speed-distance event. You're not competing against another car, per se. You're competing against the clock. It's all about covering a specified distance at a specified average speed in a certain amount of time. For example, we have the 90-mile challenge. If I'm in the 150-mile-per-hour class, that means if I average a perfect 150 mph over the 90 miles of road, I'll finish in exactly 36 minutes. So that is my objective: to finish in 36 minutes or finish in the specified time for whatever average speed we selected. Then, we have a speed window. That speed window we call our upper and lower tech limits. You are clocked at various points on the course, and you can't go slower or faster than the tech limits for your average speed group.

PRI: This racing takes place on ordinary roads closed down for the event?

Offutt: Yes, county roads or, in the case of Silver State, on a state highway. The Texas event also uses a state highway.

PRI: How do you get approval for these events?

Offutt: All of the open road races in America initially started in Nevada in 1988. While I can't speak to the very first one, the reason the state would let us shut down the highway was on the charter of bringing tourism and tourist dollars to the area. That was the original charter. That's why they allow this, because the events bring hundreds of thousands of dollars into the community.

On the other hand, a group of us tried to get an event started here in Arizona, and the political red tape at the end of the day just shut it down. I know some folks that have tried it in another state out on the East Coast, and they got shut down by the state and various organizations. For example, here in Arizona, the government department that kept the race from happening was the Arizona Department of Risk Management. They were at the meeting. They said they loved it, and they probably would come to Nevada to do it. But in their official role, director of risk management, there was no way they could allow it in Arizona.

PRI: Who competes in open road racing? What kind of cars and drivers do you see?

Offutt: I know greater than 50% of participants are Corvette owners, but as far as who does this, I would say all kinds of people, from professional racing drivers to ordinary car enthusiasts. I've been doing this for 22 years; and I have seen NASCAR drivers, and I have seen grandmas in their daily drivers and everything in between. I would say though, the biggest majority are people who have nice cars, be it a Corvette or an AMG sedan like me, or whatever. They want to run the car at speed comfortably without risking going to jail or risking getting spun out by some hot shot on a track. This is a place where people can bring their cars, sign up, listen to a little safety talk, and drive that car at speed for a while and enjoy it without all the risks associated with putting it on a track or speeding illegally down a highway.

PRI: How did you personally become involved with the Silver State Classic?

Offutt: A long time ago, long before I did Silver State, I did some...

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