Racing on the edge.

Byline: MARK BAKER The Register-Guard

COTTAGE GROVE - It's 9 o'clock on a Tuesday night in late summer and it's raining.

Raining dirt. Raining mud. Raining both, sideways.

Raining anything - including hot dog wrappers - that a 100 mph wind can whip at you.

And the crowd of about 5,000 at the Cottage Grove Speedway is loving every bit of it. Of course, most of them are wearing goggles as they watch 24 sprint cars race around the quarter-mile dirt oval in the evening's main event. The dirt and dust created by the race cars lands on their skin and clothes, but no one seems to mind too much, although a few shield their eyes and wince.

The "World of Outlaws," a national sprint-car tour, was in town. It was the biggest race of the year for the speedway and its owners, Bob and Russell Leach, and in a way, a last public plea before an Oct. 3 date with a Lane County hearings official.

For the past six months, the 46-year-old speedway has been embroiled in controversy and faces the possibility of closure if the Leaches can't convince the county to grandfather it into current land use plans or grant a conditional use permit.

County planning director Kent Howe recently rejected the Leaches' contention that the track, its grandstands, parking lots and assorted outbuildings should all be declared a legal "grandfathered" use of the property that is zoned for agriculture, grazing and timber.

Although the city is fully supportive of the speedway, it lies just outside the city limits and thus falls under the county's jurisdiction. Trouble started last winter when the Leaches began building a new grandstand and making other changes without getting building permits.

"I'd just hate to see this go, because this is something that's passed down from generation to generation," Troy Fleming of Pleasant Hill said as he leaned over a chain-link fence, watching the world's best sprint car drivers warm up.

Fleming, 33, has been coming here since he was a child. His father brought him. Nowadays, he brings his twin boys.

Opponents of the track say it has not only violated land use laws for years, but it's also noisy and a detriment to the environment.

"I think it's crazy to shut it down because it helps what little economy we have in Cottage Grove," said 32-year-old Jennifer Caldwell, a Cottage Grove resident who has been coming to the speedway since she was 16.

On this night, the crowd was larger than half the town, which has about 8,600 residents. Revenue from Tuesday's race was estimated to pump $1 million into the local economy, speedway spokesman Mike Allen said.

"Look at all the license plates in the parking lot from California and Washington," said Steve Klinkenbeard of Bakersfield, Calif. The 51-year-old retiree follows the "outlaws" tour when they are on the West Coast, offering to use his baby blue 1972 Toyota Land Cruiser as a "push" car. Sprint cars have no ignition or clutch and must be push-started onto the track.

A former race-car driver, Klinkenbeard follows the tour "just for fun," bringing his yellow lab, Cleo, along for the ride. He'd only been in town a day or so but estimated he had spent $200 thus far on a hotel room, gas, food and drinks. "And I'm just one guy," he said.

Klinkenbeard has seen a lot of racetracks and said he has heard lots of complaints about different tracks all over the country, whether it be about noise or about land use issues. He considers most of the complainants to be hypocrites.

"It's just an amazing, amazing thing that people buy into something not knowing what's around it," he said of those who buy homes near racetracks that have been established for years.

"I just think people are trying to ruin something," said 18-year-old Melissa Yates of Roseburg, one of the few women who race sprint cars. "It's been here since the '50s and if people don't like it they should move." Yates' father, Gary Yates, taught her how to drive, she said.

For many, coming to the speedway is a family thing. Four young boys watched part of Tuesday's races through the chain-link fence, their knees nestled into the dirt by the fence.

"It's good family entertainment and it's cheap," said Ann Richards of Eugene. She and her husband, Dick, wore racing T-shirts as they admired the cars down in the pits. However, Tuesday's race, at $30, was the most expensive of the year. Most races run much lower than that, about $10 for adults, Ann Richards said.

"It's more of a family sport than most sports," Dick Richards said.

Dale Smith of Cottage Grove grew up at the track. The 39-year-old got to race against the world's best sprint car racers Tuesday night, finishing eighth in the main event. His father raced before him, and being able to race against the best around was a thrill for a hometown guy, Smith said.

"Once it gets in your blood, you can't get it out," he said.

Although the "outlaws" tour consists of professional racers who earn a living driving sprint cars, local racers do it mostly as a hobby, and a serious one at that, Smith said.

He's poured more than $50,000 into his car. The engine alone cost $35,000, he said.

The professional racers pull their cars from race to race in trailers that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, Smith said.

Steve Kinzer of Bloomington, Ind., considered the top sprint car racer in the world, said he invests about $1 million a year in his career. He finished second in Tuesday's main event.

Whether he'll ever return is now up to the county.

"I stayed out of drugs my whole life because of this," driver Jeff Thompson, 30, who grew up in Cottage Grove and now lives in Harrisburg, said as he surveyed the pit area Tuesday night.

"It means so much to the community. The (Leaches) have done so much to improve it. Maybe they didn't go about it the right way ... but I think people just need to look at it and give it a chance."

CAPTION(S):

Drivers and crews work feverishly in the pit to get ready for practice laps at the Cottage Grove Speedway. THOMAS BOYD / The Register-Guard Sprint car driver Danny Lasoski, the 2001 "World of Outlaws" champion, signs autographs outside his trailer for Ulysses Garcia of Brownsville. Steve Klinkenbeard moves his Landcruiser to the outside lane as the car he has just pushed onto the track passes by at the Cottage Grove Speedway. "World of Outlaws" sprint cars slide through the curves during the final race. Noise from the cars has irritated vocal city dwellers in Cottage Grove, and their complaints threaten to shut down the races.