Have you ever wanted to just flat-out punch your car’s accelerator to the floor and keep it there until you were well beyond 100 miles per hour? And to be able to do it legally? I had that privilege over the weekend, and it was one of the most exhilarating experiences I’ve had in my driving life. Best of all, I did it with both of my brothers who also wanted to push their own vehicles to the limits. I might have finished the day with the dead-slowest trap speed, but I had a grin on my face the whole time.
Racing Experience – or Lack Thereof
As far as performance / competition driving goes, my experience is limited. I participated in an autocross session in 2009, I’ve drag-raced a quarter-mile twice in 2016 and 2021, and I’ve had a few closed-course private events with road courses and track days. My favorite race event was when I ran in the 2007 “Bonneville 100” open-road race in northern Nevada. The race course was a 50-mile closed section of desolate Highway 93 just outside Wendover, Nevada. I was able to drive my personal car – with some safety provisions added – at 105 miles per hour average speed for 100 miles (down and back).
No Fly Zone Background
This time, it was back to drag racing, but with an airplane runway as the track. Gila Bend is a remote small town about an hour southwest of Phoenix, Arizona on what used to be a stretch of old U.S. Highway 80. An airstrip located there gets repurposed once per year for a race event called “No Fly Zone.” The event is put on by Omega Motorsport; Omega had arranged to use the roughly one-mile-long runway for the program (half of it for speeding up, and half of it for slowing down).
In Good Company
My two brothers and some other family members came from Utah for the occasion, and they packed some pretty serious hardware:
Payton has a 2002 Lexus IS300 with a turbocharged 3.0-liter inline-six mated to a six-speed manual transmission. The upgrades made to this car are lengthy, and the car has been dyno-tested at about 900 horsepower. Bentley brought his 2017 Acura NSX with an estimated 550 horsepower courtesy of a turbocharged V6 hybrid that uses three electric motors for immediate torque delivery.
My weapon of choice was a bone-stock 1992 Acura NSX five-speed with 119,000 miles on it. The car has served me well as a weekend cruiser for the dozen years I’ve owned it, but I’ve never put it through any kind of high-performance time trial until now. It has only 270 horsepower, but it is adept at handling.
The other 118 vehicles on the participant list – excluding sponsors, which weren’t listed – ranged all the way up to over 1,300 horsepower. The event seemed to be largely dominated by domestic makes; there were 25 Camaros and Corvettes combined, for example. My car ranked second-to-last in terms of highest to lowest horsepower for the entire registered attendee list. It was also among the oldest cars there at 31 years old; a couple of late 1960s Camaros and a Barracuda were the only other cars older than 2000.
Race Day
Bright and early on Saturday, October 21, we rolled out to the airstrip, and it took a little over an hour to get there from Phoenix. Weather was comfortable if not a little crisp, but things would soon heat up to triple-digit levels (yes, even in late October!). Omega Motorsport established an efficient check-in and driver education process via a 9:00 meeting before the track went “hot” for the day.
As with any performance driving event, safety was key here. Waivers, helmets, and a vehicle tech inspection were all part of the process for getting the approval to play the game. In the interest of fostering proper competition and increasing awareness for staging purposes, race representatives also wrote the horsepower rating on the side windows of each vehicle. All of that aside, right off the bat, I knew my first opponent needed to be my car’s much-newer NSX sibling.
Final Results
The way that No Fly Zone works is that you can take as many trips down the strip as you want (and as many as your car can handle). Participants were staged in two lanes that inched forward until go-time. At times, the wait was about 15 or 20 minutes to get up to the start line based on the volume of vehicles. In the end, the white 2017 NSX left my red 1992 in its dust – but this was expected. After all, it had a 300-horsepower advantage, triple electric motors for instant take-off torque, and all-wheel drive for max grip. I rolled through the trap at 125 miles per hour, well behind the white car that ran a 149.
My car – and my skill level – proved to be consistent throughout the day, and after three runs within a one-mile-per-hour result, I decided that was about all I’d squeeze out of it. The shocker of the day was how well Payton’s IS300 performed. Granted, he’s spent the last 10 years perfecting the build, but he far surpassed his expectations of running a 170-mph trap speed. He ended up hitting 176 – twice – and the second time, he had a passenger in the car which gave a clear power-to-weight disadvantage. Wow.
Congrats, Payton, on a successful day with your insane modified Lexus.
Join the Fun
Omega Motorsport operates “No Fly” events in both California and Arizona. The next one will run this Saturday, October 28 at Minter Field in Shafter from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Registration costs $250 and spectator tickets are available for $10 each at the gate. If you have ever wanted to put the pedal to the metal in your own car to see what it’s capable of, No Fly Zone is an incredible experience.
Now, where can I squeeze a few more horses out of my little 3.0-liter V6…
