VISION race car at Auto X event in the old El Toro Marine base in Irvine, CA. Vision and other preformance shops that sponsor Club racing bring their cars to Auto X from time to time. Most participants however, are enthusiasts who bring their daily driver or second car to have fun in the reasonably safe environment of Auto X where you race against time and your only opponents on track are plastic cones. I like to photograph as many Auto X events as I can, given that they’re usually on Sunday and we occasionally have other commitments.
The Auto X track at El Toro is nice because it’s very large, the old Aircraft runway for the Marine base that was there for many years. It works great for photography because in most places the backgrounds are nice. The downside is that because it’s basically an abandoned location, surrounded by dirt fields and buildings in various stages of demolition and construction, there is lots of debris on the track including small rocks. This is a problem for car owners who like to keep their cars’ paint from being damaged. This image was made with a Nikon D3s in DX crop mode and a 70-200 VRII 2.8 zoom
More about race photography techniques with subsequent images.