It's too bad people do this stuff illegally, rather than going to the track. Drag strips near me are like $20 for the whole night, with as many runs down the strip as your car can handle. The full tracks are pretty cheap as well, and have open race days as least weekly throughout the summer.
I'm positive that if the attendees joy of these events is car-related (as opposed to enjoying the illegality of it), a track near them can give them the same (or better) feeling.
This is also a side effect of cuts to street traffic motorcycle police staffing, with limited resources allocated elsewhere and funding starved due to seized-up local politics and police mistreatment of citizens. People sometimes now just disregard red lights in the Bay Area as the chances of a traffic cop seeing them do so are so close to zero as to make it a safe bet.
I generally loathe the idea of increasing policing but it’s either that or automated camera enforcement with plate readers, since we can’t trust ourselves to be sensible about it.
But as others have pointed out to me, it seems these may be more of a counter-culture/party type thing than a purely car thing. I was looking at it from the wrong perspective.
Your car would get kicked out of a lot of races. Even the 24 Hours of Lemons has noise limits. Most sanctioning bodies do because they don't want to get noise complaints from neighbors who moved in after the track opened.
Sonoma Raceways - 103dB at 50ft.
Thunderhill Raceways - 103dB, mufflers required.
Laguna Seca - 90dB, with rare exceptions.
Antioch - 95dB at 100ft.
Ocean Speedway - 90dB at 100ft.
Petaluma Speedway - 95dB at 100ft, mufflers required.
Stockton 99 Speedway - 95dB, "exhaust must be turned down or out".
Measurement techniques vary; Laguna Seca is especially hostile to noise to the point that some stock exhaust systems do not comply from factory (i.e. Subaru WRX STi); Stockton 99 buries the limit deep in the fine print viewed by racers; Nascar is difficult to host as their cars can reach 130dB; enforcement may be more or less strict; it's possible there are smaller local tracks I don't personally know about that aren't listed here (I'm more familiar with North than East or South, for example).
I actually went and re-read the rules for the three tracks I most commonly go to (just in case I was mistaken/misremembering), however there are no noise provisions at all.
>some stock exhaust systems do not comply from factory (i.e. Subaru WRX STi);
Yikes! They definitely wouldn't like my WRX STI.
There's some factory Porsche setups that also cross the 90dB threshold. You could look up automated noise enforcement trials in NYC for some really upset people who found out that their factory-stock cars are illegally loud. I haven't seen anything serious stem from that yet, but I personally cannot wait for enforcement here at home just to put a stop to all the racing exhausts on the streets around here!
Meanwhile less than a few miles away on Marine Drive, there are weekly street races happening at the same time. These guys spend thousands of dollars on their cars, but won't spend $100 to get actual times, and have actual timing lights, and avoid any worry about killing someone or getting arrested.
Part of me thinks that the city should help fund a free or discount drag race night just to get some of these guys interested and off the streets. It can be intimidating to bring your car to the track the first time. But I took my old car that ran 18s and had a blast! And I've done it a ton since then. You learn a lot being around other drag racers who are really tuning cars to get the most out of it.
Is that.. something the people participating want?
I kind of figured it was about doing cool shit with your car, but is it more about pissing other people off?
Being illicit & counter-culture is part of the draw.