Buckling his seatbelt and revving up his engine, the eager racer takes a quick glance at his opponent and the excited crowd. Then he focuses on the lights ahead -- yellow, yellow, yellow, green. As the light flicks to green, he steps on the gas in a quick race to the finish line.
The Cavalier Association of Vehicles launched its first annual U.Va. versus Virginia Tech shootout on April 11. Members of both the University and Virginia Tech car clubs met at the Natural Bridge Dragway, half-way between Charlottesville and Blacksburg, for the race.
U.Va. brought 25 cars and Tech came with 40 to race on the one-eighth mile strip. "So basically, for the first few hours it was qualifying," fourth-year Commerce student and CAV president Tim Woo said. "So everyone just ran for fun to see what kind of times they would get."
Times ranged from eight to eleven seconds. After getting qualifying times, competitors took the seven fastest cars from each club and matched them against each other. The fastest University qualifier was second-year Engineering student Matt Skancke, who had a time of 9.6 seconds in his 1999 red Ford Mustang GT.
Of the seven races, U.Va. won two. "In every single race, we beat them in the reaction time but they just had faster cars," Woo said. "So given equally matched cars, then U.Va. would have beaten them all." This year, however, Tech took home the trophy. Natural Bridge Dragway purchased the trophy for the event, and it will switch among the schools each year, depending upon who wins
"The strategy is that you have to have really fast reflexes and they call that reaction time," Woo said. Reaction time is how long it takes from when the light turns green to when the car crosses the starting line. A perfect reaction time is .5 seconds because it is supposed to be impossible to get below that, Woo said.
To increase the speeds their cars can reach, members of the club have made many modifications to their cars. Many members buy their cars knowing they are going to race them, but often changes need to be made. Almost everybody either has modified intakes, exhausts, gears or turbos, Woo said.
When the drag race came to a close, members of both teams returned to Blacksburg. U.Va. students enjoyed a barbecue with Virginia Tech students the following day.
"It was a chance for both clubs to get together and meet each other and talk about their cars and racing," Woo said.
CAV members then were invited to participate in the annual Virginia Tech car show April 13 before heading back to Charlottesville.
While the weekend was exciting, CAV aspires to defeat Tech next year. "We are still pretty small, 50 members, so hopefully we can get more people and more cars next year and bring back the trophy," Woo said.
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