E6

Lori Gallagher

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Speak Up

Who amongst us, at some point, hasn't felt the need for speed?

I'm as guilty of it as the next person, but no matter how much I open up the Accent on the highway, I'm barely cracking the speed limit.

That doesn't really compare when you look at what the Forbes family gets to do on an average weekend.

Sarah Forbes, 18, showed me a video of what two teenage girls can get up to on a Saturday night.

It features Sarah and her friend, Jill Freeman, each behind the wheel of a dragster at the Miramichi Dragway. It's amazing to watch, especially for someone like me who is new to the world of drag racing.

What is especially intriguing is that Sarah, like her 16-year-old brother Kyle, has been driving on the track since long before they could think about getting a regular driver's license.

The pair began as junior dragsters when Sarah was 13 and Kyle was 11. Sarah notes that Kyle got into the sport first, but it wasn't long before she was driving as well.

The first family member to fall in love with the sport, however, was their father, Doug Forbes.

When he graduated from high school in 1974, he says, everyone used to head to PEI for the weekend. "So we went to PEI and watched the drag races."

Doug had been interested for awhile, but after seeing the races live, he was hooked.

"We worked our way up through the years to different cars and faster cars."

He raced all over, including Quebec, Ontario, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Florida and North Carolina, before taking a break from the sport.

These days the family stays closer to home, regularly travelling to Miramichi and PEI for races, with an annual trip to New Hampshire.

Doug drives a car owned by Paul and Lynn Dunster, but the family owns the cars driven by Sarah and Kyle.

"It's so neat to be heading to the races as a family," he says.

The races in New Hampshire are a lot bigger than the races here, plus there are drivers there who make their living drag racing. They might be in the higher classes, but they're racing on the same track and using the same pit.

"They're all very down-to-earth people who, for the most part, would give the shirt right off their back," says Doug.

That sense of camaraderie seems to be characteristic of this sport, as the people involved often become friends and just about everyone is willing to help if you need something.

"If you're at the races in the pits and something breaks, your neighbour probably has that part and he'll coming running with it and help you put it in," says Marlene Forbes, Doug's wife and the proud mother of Sarah and Kyle. "It's family to us."

Even though the Forbes family had quit racing for awhile, when they went back to the track it was like they had never left.

"Marlene would take forever to come up through the pits, because people would want to stop, give a hug, talk about where everybody has been. It was like a homecoming," says Doug.

This is a family-geared sport, he says. It's safe and the junior dragsters program is a great way to mentor young drivers.

"It's a good show and the drivers in the Maritimes are as good as you'll come against anywhere," he says.

And if you want to meet the drivers and see their cars, you can, as the pits aren't just for racers, says Marlene. They are open to anyone.

What really caught my attention is when Doug mentioned I could take my Hyundai Accent and race it - there is a sportsman class for that - and I could walk away with a trophy.

I guess my green machine and I will see all of you at the drag races.

Lori Gallagher is a staff writer at The Daily Gleaner. She can be reached at gallagher.lori@dailygleaner.com.