Stumpy Pine and Scrub Oak is about the only vegetation that grows in the rolling sand hills around Long Island's Bridgehampton race track. A finger of the stuff thrusts toward me on the left as I set up for Turn Seven in what racers call Echo Valley. The ribbon of track heaves itself over a dune, hiding its apex as I turn in, hoping to match my car's ballistic arc with the corner's geometry.

Here, where Aston Martins once dueled with Ferraris, I am now engaged in combat with a Dodge Charger, a Volvo Sedan, Volkswagen Rabbits and miscellaneous Hondas. This is budget racing, a form of the sport that allows everyman to merge with his machine on macadam graced with the elite sweat of such luminaries as Briggs Cunningham, Stirling Moss and Dan Gurney.

I have arrived here via a circuitous route, beginning in 1986 with a Skip Barber competition school, followed by eight years with the Porsche Club running my 914-4 in what they call "track events" (non competitive driver's education at speed) and finally, graduating to real racing last year with the Porsche Club and EMRA who are sanctioning today's time trials and tomorrow's race.

The Eastern Motor Racing Association was incorporated in 1972 as a union of seven local sports car clubs in the New York area. From birth, it was a no BS organization with a zero tolerance for bureaucracy. This way of thinking was expressed by the simple dictum printed on every race entry form - "All results are final, there will be no protests." To this day, there are no standing committees and race rules are decided in a yearly "town hall" style meeting where every member is allowed his/her say.
As with every human community, the club's folk lore underscores its most basic philosophy - treating its members like an extended family.

"We got to the end of the day," continues Peter, "and I was putting the car away. Robin came over and said, 'can I help?' I showed her how to change over from track tires to rollers and she did that very quickly. And then she said, 'is it OK for me to sit in the car?' So I cinched down the belts and put a helmet on her and when I walked away I heard 'vroom, vroom' coming out from under the helmet's visor. The next year we were married."

"EMRA people share," says Barrie Allen, the club's trophy chairwoman. "When I was learning the track, people told me all the little secrets, turning in here and braking there or whatever. I have time trailed for three years and the second year, partly because of the help I got from other drivers, I came in third in class for the season."

"How does it feel to be a woman driver competing against so many men?"

"There's a little bit of flirting that goes on, but as soon as you begin to talk racing with these guys you are equals. It's a common ground with men. It's genderless."

EMRA runs both time trials and races. During a time trial, you get two practice sessions of about 25 minutes each and, after lunch, you run the track alone against the clock.

"With the time trial program," says EMRA newsletter editor Beth Cox, "you can take your ordinary street car and go out, with an instructor, and learn the track so there's a steady influx of newcomers. We encourage people to time trial for a year to get experience before they go bumper to bumper."

"In this day and age, if you really wand to drive your car, where are you going to go?" Cally Kruger adds, "on a highway you're going to get a ticket, you're going to be dangerous, so you can come here, get an instructor and go out on a real race track."

On Saturday at eight AM, Bob Hill parks his Ram 250 van at the top of a small rise in Bridgehampton's dusty paddock. Opening the back, he reveals a neatly made up bed and a pair of official EMRA shirts on hangers. He removes a wooden folding chair, a well-used card table and five bright red cones which he uses to mark out his tech inspection area. Bob wears an EMRA tee shirt with 'over 25 years of racing just for the fun of it' imprinted on the back. For the next two days, he will preside here as tech chairman.

Shortly after Bob opens for business, a Chevrolet Corvair with an unusual twin turbo engine growls up to the card table for tech inspection.

"We take cars in here that the SCCA wouldn't look at," Bob says. "We base our classes on engine size and weight, starting with ST-5 which is for low powered four cylinder cars and ending at STGT for cars with 300 to 400 horsepower and all kinds of modifications. We had one guy with a humongus BMW sedan that we called 'The Limo.' We put him in a class where he was competitive."

Jerry Matlin and his son Larry drive up in a Mazda Miata festooned with SCCA, EMRA and "One Lap of America" stickers. When Larry was 14, his father bought him a 1969 Camaro. They labored over the car for two years, restoring it to pristine condition for Larry's 16th birthday present. Since then, they have been racing together.

"He's a little faster than I am," Jerry says somewhat wistfully.

Next comes a red fiat X1/9 roadster with a racing motto across the front window in neat plastic decals. It says: "the thrill of victory and the agony of d'Fiat."

During a lull, Bob says: "To keep things cheap I discourage people from putting on fancy modifications. I tell them, 'get the car to handle well, get a decent set of tires under it, make it reliable and safe and come out and learn how to drive before you do anything to the car.' There are guys who think you have to have a blue-printed engine, but when I ran my Pinto, I rebuilt my engine with a set of rings, a set of bearings and a gasket set - 125 bucks - and it would last a whole season. You can race on a real slim budget if you're handy and you're into it."

Peter McCarthy drives up to the card table in a Renault LeCar sporting a front air dam, rear spoiler and wheel spats of sheet metal. Peter is the proprietor of Midnight Auto. The LeCar is one of Peter's "school cars" which he rents for 200 dollars for a time trial and 300 for a race. "If you roll it into a ball and I take the ball home it's 2500 bucks," Peter says. "The car runs in ST5 and it embarrasses some Ferrari guys."

I ask Peter if he has a formula for budget racing.

"If you want to go budget racing, don't build your own car, find somebody else's race car. A car that you like. If you enjoy the car, you can live with a lot of faults, and all cars have them. Buy something light. Buy something small. It's cheaper, doesn't use much gas, doesn't wear out the tires. Get a car that there's a lot of. When we rolled the Renault, people called and said, 'Hey, will you take my LeCar out of the driveway?' Now I have a bunch of parts cars in the back yard."

Bridgehampton is a combination of high speed sweepers and tight hairpins - many with apexes that are cleverly concealed by the landscape. It takes time to learn the geography. My 914, recently prepared by Shine's racing in Walpole, Massachusetts, has taken a first at Lime Rock (In Porsche Club Racing) a second at Summit Point and two poles in class, but here, on an unfamiliar track, we are struggling. At the end of the straight, I learn to take the downhill with only a minor lift, still not comfortable enough to go flat out as many do. The tight corners are relatively easy but the faster ones still cause me to pucker. In turn 8, I learn to carry speed; and for turn 13, I allow myself to avoid braking and carry my momentum out onto the long front straight. I'm doing better but still running too slowly to win anything. I decide to follow the EMRA dictum of racing "for the fun of it."

That night, a boisterous crowd assembles for the time trial trophies -- brass and wood plaques for third and second and gaudy glittering things for first place.

At the EMRA barbecue, Bob Barmak is sitting in a plastic chair, celebrating -- one of those glittery trophies cradled in his lap. He drives a VW Scirocco and set fastest time of day in his class. "I always wanted to race," he says. "I hung around cars a lot, did some work on them, but I never could find a way to go racing. Then about two years ago, I came to an EMRA event and they looked at my street car and said 'You want to run it?' I tried to come up with excuses. 'Well my tires suck, my suspension sucks,' and they're like, 'Bob, we don't want to hear about it, just get out there and try it!' They said, 'if you go out there you're always going to remember this day.' And they were so right. I remember everything about that day. That was about two years ago and later I went in with a partner on a real race car and I'm first in class today."

That night, I learn this will be the last EMRA race at Bridgehampton -- a developer plans to turn the track into a golf course.

The sun has gone down, a bright half moon hangs over the paddock. I sit down with Brendan Norton, a young EMRA driver. He has grease under his fingernails.

"I'm here helping Peter McCarthy," he says. "I've been working on a Sprite for him and, in exchange, he's letting me race the car."

This is Brendan's first time on a race track.

"My father was here for the first race at Bridgehampton when they drove through the streets in town," he tells me. "He saw the event through snow fences. I always wanted to come here, and now I'm here for the last race. What an experience - to race on a track with this kind of history."

Later, Brendan tells me that his father has recently passed on. "Running here is a kind of tribute to him," he says.

The next morning, Race Day, Jim and Nancy Sabiston invite me to breakfast at their campsite (camping is another way EMRA people keep their costs down and enjoy each other's company). We consume Belgian pancakes and sausage in the shade of their Jeep Cherokee, a black Caldwell D-17 Formula Vee resting in its trailer - customized from the kind landscapers use to haul around lawn mowers.

"I paid $3500 for the car," Jim says, "and I ran it all last year without any real expenses. One way we keep the costs down is by helping each other. You don't need a trailer full of spare parts because you can always count on somebody else having what you need."

Formula Vee, I learn, is one sure fire way to go racing with little expense.

To keep on budget, Vee drivers work deals for cheap parts, like tires, for example. "In 1996, I heard of an East Tennessee tire company that had a bunch of Bridgestones they wanted to get rid of," Formula Vee competitor Harry Schneider says. "They had 36 of them for 35 dollars each. I figured that would take care of nine guys because the tires would last a whole season. So I bought them and resold the tires for the same price to everyone in our group and they did last the whole season."

Beth Cox races on a budget by renting a car. "I had an MR2 for three years and concluded it was cheaper to rent a ride from Charlie Greenhouse at Entropy Racing."

Another reason for renting, Beth admits, is her lack of mechanical aptitude.

"If Charlie sees me with a wrench in my hand anywhere near the car he says, 'put down the-wrench! Now, step away from the car!'"

I find Charlie working on one of his cars, each painted bright yellow and parked in a neat line in front of his 1951 American LaFrance fire truck which has been cut down and fitted with ramps to carry his Entropy scuderia. The hose boxes now hold tools hanging neatly on pegs.

Earlier that morning, Charlie and his neophyte racers had walked the 2.85 miles of track, studying each corner, learning the geography of braking, turn in, apex and track out. It costs $500 to rent an Entropy vehicle (a Saab Sonnet, Saab 96, Toyota Corolla, Fiat 128-3P) for a sprint race, during which a racer gets a 20 minute practice session, a 20 minute qualifying session and a 20 to 30 minute race. Time trials are a bargain at only $250.00.

Although EMRA is small by SCCA standards, it offers a multitude of events, 10 sprint races, 4 enduros (including one, two and four hour events), and 7 time trials at 5 different race tracks - Bridgehampton, Pocono, Watkins Glen, Summit Point and Lime Rock. Holding tradition dear, EMRA is the last club in America to still employ the LeMans style start at their Pocono enduro.

Sam piloting his 914

At about five o'clock, the green flag drops for the small bore race. I'm running in 22nd place overall (well, there are three classes ahead of mine) and get the drop on a few cars. Ahead of me, a big green Volvo is piloted by a man with an appropriate name, Lars Anderson. The two of us battle for the next few laps. Then, entering Echo Valley with the nose of my 914 a few feet from the Volvo's butt, Lars drifts a little wide. I move inside. Suddenly, there's a cloud of dust ahead and I see the snout of a Fiat X1/9 appear in my path. An upside down Fiat X1/9! I jog left and back off. Lars does the same. By the time we hit turn nine, black flags are flying everywhere. The race is stopped and eventually canceled when we run out of time.

At the evening's beer party I ask someone about the X1/9 driver.

"He's fine, the cage held and they got him out pretty fast. They think a ball joint failed."

The party is subdued. We are all reminded that racing can be a dangerous sport - what a driver fears most is sudden mechanical failure. And there's another thing. This track is one of a handful of historic places in the history of American racing, and soon it will be no more. The talk turns to the early days when racers often drove their cars to the track and home again.

"If you hearken back to the good old days in the 50's and 60's," says Jim Sabiston, "it was fun. There was a lot of camaraderie. But as the SCCA aged and became more professional, some of that was lost. EMRA is probably one of the few clubs that has stuck to really fun club racing."

The fun will go on, of course, at places like Lime Rock, Pocono, Watkins Glen and Summit Point, but without Bridgehampton it will not be the same. On the way out, I stop to say goodbye to Brendan.

"What a blast," he tells me. "My first time on a race track. I wasn't particularly fast, but I'm learning. It was like nothing else I've experienced in a car. There's no way you can go that fast on the road. You've got to worry about other cars, guard rails, being dangerous to yourself and others…"

As a recent college graduate, I know that Brendan will soon have to get down to the business of getting a real job. But I'm sure he'll be back.

"You know, it's a little weird," he says. "My father was at Bridgehampton for the first race and now I'm here for one of the last. I kind of feel like I'm closing a circle."