Ritualization as the incarnation of some central or original even becomes transformed, at the track, by the abutted contest of vehicle and performance. Up against time, velocity, and distance, this eternally recirculating contest summons up and recapitulates the quiddity, the essential thatness which defines the artist s function in the order of things. Just as Scarpitta s own history is one part of the context for these, the history of American dirt-track racing is another. In the twenties and thirties this develops out of the use of small flat horse-racing tracks by car buffs. The cars have to be built short to skid around turns.
Horsepower is everything.
The intricacies of European shifting on the open road are unnecessary in earlier American racing. They are put together by farmers, laborers, mechanics, men who understand the power of a tractor, so similar to a sprint car in the way it chews up the ground and attaches itself to the earth. These are primitive instruments, agricultural instruments farm tools compared with, say, the Alfa Romeo. They are designed for the specific skidding, turning conditions of the dirt track. As Scarpitta says, These cars come out of the Iron Age.