Autocross and Track day stealin'

Almost always at autocrosses and track days I leave the ignition key in, leave tools available, hardtop, street wheels/tires just sitting there. I guess I've never even thought it was a danger of anyone taking my stuff. I've done this for years. I guess I've never heard anyone losing stuff, never even occurred to me. Anybody else as trusting or naïve as me?

I typically leave the keys in the ignition during my run group. Tools and tuff typically stay out, but anything "nice" like the good camera etc usually get stashed away.

If the site is even remotely "secure," meaning that there's not a lot of non-autoX pedestrians around, I pretty much leave everything and anything unattended. If it's a highly public site I'll secure things a bit better.

Wait, I just realized you may be asking this because you're considering taking up an autocross-centric life of crime. In that case disregard my previous statement.

In reply to freestyle: Most of us do at the events I've been to. I'm always a little nervous, but most of ours have sightlines to your car at all times. There have been a few venues where there were a lot of spectators, and in those cases there'd be some spouses/girlfriends to keep an eye on things.

Edit: We have gotten stuff run over by spectators recently, but not stolen.

I stash my stuff, lock small valuables in my glovebox, and never leave the key in it.

But then, we have non-entrants walking around non-hot areas at some of our events.

I was more trusting when I ran with a group at a rural airport.

In reply to JG Pasterjak:

I am needing a new impact wrench...when's your next event? Hmm....

Philly Region used to run in a couple of really public spots, with almost no way to control the paddock area. I know at least 1 person lost a set of wheels.

Most of our events are at Peru. Kind of secluded. People are there. Now, when we had events at the old Busch Stadium off 16th st, berkeley yeah everything was locked up tighter than a drum. Towards the end (last year or so) we had a worker assignment to walk the parking lot to call for police on breakins. The last event we held there 5 cars got their windows smashed out and E36 M3 stolen.

A friend of mine had $500 in cash taken out of his enclosed trailer at Grattan at an SCCA National in the late 90s. He had it there to buy tires with. I pretty much lock my stuff up all the time.

I am quite paranoid. Though it seems most autozers and track day people are decent enough.

Since Rallycross is pretty much always out in a field in the middle of nowhere, I've never felt much need to lock anything up. I usually leave my toolbox out and unlocked specifically so that if anybody needs to borrow a tool of some sort, I can just point over in the general direction of my spot and let them figure it out for themselves. I also always have the key in the ignition and leave an extra key in the toolbox. We showed up at an event once an hour and a half from home and realized that the key for the car wasn't with us, and I don't want to repeat that.

Autocrossers are a pretty good group, but it's easy to get complacent and it doesn't pay to be an idiot. I felt really really stupid when I came back from my work assignment to realize I had left my new GoPro suction-cupped to the quarter panel of the car parked in the paddock. Lucky for me, it was waiting right where I left it, but it would have taken about 15 seconds to disappear, and it wouldn't even have aroused any suspicion.

In the paddock at club races or when instructing for DEs I leave my truck and trailer unlocked almost always. The exception being if the races are open to the public and our whole group is going in to town for dinner or something. Otherwise there is usually someone manning a grill, watching dogs or just chillin' under the pop-ups between runs to discourage strangers from helping themselves.

In 15 years I've never had anything go missing except the last beer in the cooler. When you say things like "help yourselves" you have to live with the consequences. ;)

As a general rule, I used to consider autocross events pretty low risk. Pretty much the same group of people and I knew most of them personally. Lately, though, it seems like we're drawing in more of the "flat hatter" crowd. Not really complaining, as the sport needs "new blood" or it won't survive, but it does seem to raise the risk of stuff getting jacked, and I've made adjustments accordingly.

That said, I don't worry about the keys in the car, because there's about 30 people at every event that know its my car and would stop anyone who tried to roll off in it.

After years of Autox and track days and now 16 lemons races, never had an issue. Basically all of the locations were safe though, but Lemons weekends can be a zoo. We often have someone at the paddock, but not always, especially with camp in a different spot than the garages. I leave my keys in the truck half the weekend, tools and everything is out as you can't really lock it up. We keep cash under control, and take keys out of things at night if we remember, but that is more to avoid poor decisions by others after a few drinks. Even on the lemons forum there have only been a handful of incidents with stuff that went missing, and a few cases of someone accidentally picking up stuff that belonged to a neighboring team, etc.

I do the same thing at the track. We've had a couple of exhibition events in parking lots with spectators milling around though, and for those we were specifically told to lock stuff up.

kazoospec wrote: As a general rule, I used to consider autocross events pretty low risk. Pretty much the same group of people and I knew most of them personally. Lately, though, it seems like we're drawing in more of the "flat hatter" crowd. Not really complaining, as the sport needs "new blood" or it won't survive, but it does seem to raise the risk of stuff getting jacked, and I've made adjustments accordingly.

Don't worry, flatbillers are usually wealthy upper-middle class kids, they probably have the least incentive to steal of anyone there

I leave my keys in the car as well during autoX events. On thing we do that helps is have EVERYONE sign a waiver. If you are on our site even for 5 minutes to watch, you've signed your name and gotten a wristband. Maybe that extra bit of identification helps people stay honest.

Side note, Im usually so oblivious I've "lost" my good pressure gauge twice now and both times had it returned to me by fellow racers.

I normally leave the auto-x stuff unlocked unattended etc at the home site because we get maybe 2 spectators that arent related to a racer at an event. When I did rally-x I locked everything up because there was too many flat brimmer yolo types around and not enough racers.

At my local events, there aren't too many spectators around to worry about stealing your stuff. Of course, you don't have to worry too much about your fellow competitors.

Its the hotel at night when I worry.

freestyle wrote: Almost always at autocrosses and track days I leave the ignition key in, leave tools available, hardtop, street wheels/tires just sitting there. I guess I've never even thought it was a danger of anyone taking my stuff. I've done this for years. I guess I've never heard anyone losing stuff, never even occurred to me. Anybody else as trusting or naïve as me?

I had a toolbox stolen from Norwalk.

I never have had issues at track days/autocrosses/rallycrosses, although one of my friends did find that his air tank walked away.

I've never had any issues autocrossing with Martin Sports Car Club (great group of guys). I still always kept most of my stuff within sprinting distance or there were always friends and family around to keep an eye out for things. Hell I can recall a few times where people left tools, parts, misc. gear around and it was there waiting for them at the next event or someone would take it to them.

I don't trust people at all anyways so it's always been a practice of mine to keep stuff secure. I've had too many things go missing at the local drag strip to ever feel safe.

We usually leave our keys in the car at Track days but then our car is usually sitting on grid with us all day. When we bring the track car my tools, jack, wheels and such usually sit out during the day but my tools get locked in the car at night. We know almost every person by name at our events, and I doubt anyone would steal my junk, but better safe than sorry. I have heard of a very few racers having tools walk off, one lost a nice Matco torque wrench last year and it really rubbed me the wrong way. It was the mechanics personal tool not a shop tool owned by the wealthy car owner like the thief probably assumed. Heck it rubbed me the wrong way because it happened on my grid at our event and that's just not cool. I still have faith in mankind just have to keep an eye out.

I've never had a problem and don't find it to be a concern at most events, but did have a friend lose a set of wheels/tires at one event a few years back. It was an unusual set of circumstances that caused the paddock to be too far from and outside the line of sight from the course. Site security had video of the culprits that was enough to prove they were intentionally stolen and not by event spectators/participants...Beyond that the video was pretty useless.