This is the best $15 a person can spend in Flat Rock, Michigan — a wayward town about 20 miles outside of Detroit and the birthplace of the current Mustang.
Time at the Flat Rock Speedway is as Americana as you can get. That smell of exhaust wafting over the stands, the foot stomping crowd getting the bleachers to echo aluminum thunder and that throat closing diesel spewing from eight school buses. The there are all of the fireworks attached to the roofs of some of these full-sized school buses that are doing laps in a a Figure 8 race.
Yes, Hipster Travel Guide is not above an evening of Figure 8 racing on a quarter mile trac
k. In fact, it’s an annual event at Flat Rock and we go every year. The reason: It is frickin’ awesome.
The people watching alone is worth the price of admission and the $4 ice cold Buds just taste like summer in a plastic cup.
These races are serious and hysterical. The one 50 lap figure eight modified car race included one car dragging its muffler the entire race, while, during the grand finale, a school bus dragged its battery for all dozen laps. But there’s paint trading and full head on, into the wall kind of crashes.
But no one leaves the bus races unhappy — you just can’t.
Check out this video we’ve put together from the most recent night of Flat Rock debauchery.
And here are some more photos:
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- It’s usually called trading paint, now it’s called trading students.
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- After burners needed.
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- The prelims — only near collisions
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- And another one ready to flip
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- Yes, that’s a bus on its side. Don’t worry, they’ll flip it over.
