We Visited Denmark's Street Racing Scene

Every Saturday evening, between 100 and 400 cars from all over Denmark meet up at the Rosengård mall parking lot, right outside Odense. Here, self-proclaimed adrenaline junkies clique up in groups (all depending on their preferred car brand) to talk about, well, their cars. The BMW group, the Toyota Supra lot and the AVG crew all share an unhealthy fascination with colored LED's, have a token criminal member and yet, most kept pretty much to themselves. Every week they meet up here to chat each other up before heading over to the race site later on.

The impatient ones were showing off, speeding up the bare stretches in front of the mall, the air thick with a reek of burnt rubber and hard style pounding from trunk-mounted subwoofers. Burning your tires is called making marmalade, my hook-up Mads Larsen told me. Going racing, you meet on the line before driving a pull. Mads is a proud member of the BMW group, driving an E39 model named Little Girl that goes from 0 to 100 in 10 seconds. He’s replaced the intake and he’s looking to get the computer chip fine-tuned.

To him, it’s as much about the sense of community as it is about the racing. They run a pretty tight ship and are trying to minimize the presence of drugs at these events, apparently. They won’t let you race if you’re drunk either. In fact, they're trying to get their own spot where they will be able to race legally, just like they have in Esbjerg. Unfortunately, this parking lot is all they have right now. Last Saturday, all the living legends of the game were there. Papa Smurf and even a chap named Jimmie the Limiter. Papa Smurf started the BMW group way back, and now he’s grooming the new generation of racers. The guy brings his kids to the events. Jimmie the Limiter was said to have taken more cars to the limit and over it than anyone else.

A hundred and something cars were in the lot when the law showed up. They drove up and down the rows of heck-spoilers, ticketing a few for speeding before leaving to take up cash-cow positions along the route to the race site. People got jumpy and more and more seemed to leave for the site. Knowing the the cops were out there, they kept to the speed limit. Seeing as the crowd always races at the same spot, it would have been a breeze for the police to just roll out and arrest everyone. Why they didn’t, I’m not sure. As the sun was setting, all the racer boys started pouring out onto the track. It’s a 402 meters long, straight road near an industrial complex. 402 meters, a quarter of a mile, the way they do it in the States. Mads told me that all these folks were into the whole 2 Fast 2 Furious franchise. Odense street racing was looking ever increasingly similar to it, in fact. He didn’t care much for Tokyo Drift though.

The crowd lined up on either side of the road, drinking beer and chocolate milk, as the racers queued up behind one another. They made marmalade and just generally acted the showoff. A guy in an Audi 4x4 pulled up next to me, telling me I "better not take any fucking pictures of his car if I knew what’s good for me". Given that I enjoy the fact my genitalia is attached to my body, I took his warning.  Some overall clad mechanic wanted to know whether or not I was a cop, too. Kind of made me question whether he’d ever even seen one. This race wasn't lawless, there were rules. For instance, one man per car. That way, if anything goes wrong, the driver will be the only one making brown bread of himself. Not that anything’s really happened over the last twenty odd years according to Mads. Not on the track at least.

See, people mostly make minced meat of themselves when they take their high-octane attitude to the streets. Driving home from the events full of adrenaline. They do that a lot. That’s how one of Mads’ friends killed himself a couple of years back.)  His mates death, surprisingly enough hasn't deterred him from racing. He genuinely seemed to be more scared of losing his driver’s license. This seemed to be the primary concern for most. Tricked out rides and all, most wouldn’t race that night on account of the police presence. Some crew cut lad in baggy camouflage pants shouted into a loudspeaker, calling racers to the starting line. They kept an eye on all the cars in line, because what happens is, sometimes the police will pull up behind you in an unmarked car and arrest you the minute you step on the gas. Depends on the cop really. Some will actually race you, Mads told me.

No boys in blue in sight, so one driver cranked up some house music. Then they were off, screeching down the asphalt, reaching speeds upwards of 150 km/h, ending hours of auto-erotic foreplay in a matter of seconds.

I guess it was kind of poetic.

Follow Mads on Twitter: @madfss