My Journey to Clemson Sports Car Club
By Natalie Bell
I grew up surrounded by my dad’s love of cars, specifically BMWs. He even bought me my own BMW to push around the house, and I spent Sundays with him watching F1 races in my lucky checkered flag socks, cheering on Kimi Raikkonen. I spent hours in the garage while he worked on his autocross car, so much so that when I was three, I begged him for my mechanic’s creeper to see what he was doing.
My dad was constantly fixing up his car for autocross- a racing event where drivers race one at a time through a cone-lined course. The objective is speed and agility, as hitting a cone results in a time penalty. The event organizers calculate all the times, and drivers can see where their times compare to their peers. As I watched him draw out autocross courses for our local Baltimore autocross group, I told him that I couldn’t wait to turn thirteen so that I could ride in the car with him as he raced.
That dream would end up on pause for a while. My dad sold his tan BMW to go back to school and didn’t race for a decade. Eventually, my dad stumbled upon 24 Hours of Lemons, which is probably the weirdest racing event you could ever partake in. 24 Hours of Lemons is a riff off of 24 Hours of Lemans, a prestigious professional racing event. However, Lemons is not prestigious and is not 24 hours long.
Lemons is a two-day endurance event with various locations across the country where drivers and mechanics give old “lemons” of cars new lives as race cars. Each team must buy a car for $500 and then outfit it with a roll cage and additional safety features. My dad gathered a team of his coworkers to form Team Race Team, fixed up a BMW 318ti that hadn’t run in 10 years, and turned it into Oscar the Grouch. Or Otto, because he’s German.
Watching my dad race again renewed my interest in racing. Eventually, I want to race alongside my dad in 24 Hours of Lemons, and autocrossing is one of the first steps. I have autocrossed as a part of Clemson Sports Car Club for the past two semesters, and I plan to continue to autocross post-grad. I love the sport of constantly trying to beat my own time while simultaneously trying to stay near my dad’s time (which is much faster than mine.)
It’s so rewarding to participate in autocross with my dad and finally fulfill my childhood dream of racing with him. He has taught me not to give up on my passions- sometimes, they take time.
