Each weekend in August, Phenix City hosts an evening of wide-open dirt racing.

There aren’t many finer ways to celebrate the hottest month of the year than by watching cars slide around a dirt track on a Saturday night. Phenix City’s reputation as the outlaw capital of the South is preserved with loud engines and soaring speeds at the East Alabama Motor Speedway, a tiny 3/8 mile clay-surface racetrack on Highway 80 West, just outside of the Alabama border town.

For the uninitiated, dirt racing offers a much more “wide open” style of competition. Drivers sling their cars into corners with reckless abandon, roaring through turns sideways in a sport that, due to the small size of the track, is as much about carnival bumper cars (if they were high-speed) as it is about racing for trophies and checkered flags. East Alabama Motor Speedway offers Saturday night races every weekend in August, with its loftiest spectacle planned for Labor Day weekend: late model cars, road warriors, enduro cars, fireworks, and the most Southern racing event of all, a demolition derby. For those interested in getting behind the wheel, road warrior racing is the cheapest of the several classes of competition. Also known as “hog racing” at some tracks, a road warrior race car can be anything, though most are large vehicles—old Cadillacs, beat up Chevy Capris, Ford Galaxies, Lincoln Continentals, etc. The bigger the car, the better the weapon of mass destruction. Competitors simply take the least-used family car and weld all the doors shut, install a roll cage, spraypaint a number on the side, and purchase a fire-proof racing uniform. Passengers are optional. Call 334-297-2594 for more information, or visit www.eastalabamamotorspeedway.com.