Who we are
A band of misfits who saw our fenders away for victory!
Okay, maybe not ALL of us. We are, however, a rag tag band of autocrossers and road course racers who build, race, drink beer and above all... have a great time in everything we do.
The love and support shown by our friends and family over the years has encouraged us to launch this dream as something more formal.
Oh... you wanted the origin story? Fine then, keep scrolling.
Seriously though, thank you for helping make this dream a reality!
The beginning
Picture this, it’s April of 2012, and you’re starting your third year of autocrossing your Subaru WRX STi. You’ve spent the winter fitting coilovers and slicks. You’re ready to have a good year of racing, but a classically anal-retentive SCCA safety steward has other plans.
To be fair, we’d been making “safety 3rd” jokes for a while at this point. Adam picked it up in college and ran with it. Sometimes you’re stuck between “do it right” and “do it right now” and in those times “safety 3rd” became a motto.
On this particular beautiful spring day, most of the guys, who would one day become Safety 3rd Racing, traveled in a group to an adjacent SCCA region’s (to remain unnamed) autocross event. Upon arriving, we all went about the standard car prep, for tech. We swapped tires, splashed some over priced fuel into the tanks and donned the typical painters tape regalia for number and class.
When all of us felt ready, we had the tech inspector come over to our area of the paddock. He was disgusted with our painters tape numbers. Yea, you read that right. Disgusted. We were told that if we didn’t have vinyl or magnetic numbers, we needed to go to registration and they would print us off car numbers and class designation that we could then, tape to the car. Someone asked him why the tape numbers weren't good enough there, even though they’re a standard sight anywhere else in the SCCA. His response was that it was for safety. The workers might not be able to clearly read the tape numbers.
Adam, however, couldn't let it slide at that point. We all got our 8.5"x11" paper numbers and letters and taped them on the cars. All was well in their world...
...but Adam had a whole roll of blue tape and a feeling someone hated the way it looked. Thus, the back bumper of the STi became our first billboard.
I’m sure these people thought we were clowns. They either thought we were out of towners or newbs; so what happened next is what made this story a legend in our circles.
All five of us won our class. Brian was alone in his class at the end of the day after his competition literally quit and went home. That's a solid win if there ever was one. Adam won by 1.7 seconds. Chris won by 2.7. Jim won by .104. Jason won by 1.9.
We came, we saw, we made fun of them taking life too seriously and we won. Then we went and had beers.
Safety 3rd was cemented that day in our hearts, but would take a couple years to grow into what it is today.
Since then we've gained new teammates and had others retire. Here's to more racecars and beer! CHEERS!
