HORACE LANGFORD JR. / PVT Spring Mountain Motor Sports General Manager Dave Petrie stands in front of some of the Corvettes lined up outside the track. MARK WAITE / PVT Mark McCarthy of Las Vegas does some work on his car in front of a row of garages constructed at Spring Mountain Motor Sports. HORACE LANGFORD JR. / PVT Roc Linkov, events manager for the National Corvette Museum, briefs drivers on the course before a day of driving. Advertisement

The continuing, growing membership has led to a building spurt at Spring Mountain Motor Sports Ranch, the advanced driving school on the south end of Pahrump Valley on Highway 160.

When owners John Morris of Anaheim Hills, Calif. and Brad Rambo of San Clemente, Calif. bought the 193 acre property from Rupert Bragg Smith in June 2004, there was a 2.2-mile track with a small building for a classroom and administration building.

Earlier this month, officials from the National Corvette Museum and the vehicle line executive for Corvette, the chief engineer for the car, were on hand to help cut the ribbon for a Corvette building. That will be separate from another building completed two years ago that will now be the Lotus and radical race car building. Each has abundant garage space, classrooms and administration offices.

The growth of the Corvette driving school made expansion inevitable, according to Dave Petrie, general manger of Spring Mountain Motor Sports Ranch.

"When the new owners, John and Brad bought the facility, they saw the potential of what could happen. They tried to basically take their vision and make it grow," Petrie said.

The new owners have constructed 54 garages so members can leave their cars at the track. Petrie said there may be as many as 300 garages built on the site.

A clubhouse is under construction, Petrie expects that should be completed by the first quarter of 2008. It would convert Spring Mountain Motor Sports into a motor sports country club, what one driver called all the latest rage.

"The vision was to basically take this facility, it had a Corvette school, grow up on that and then develop this concept of a country club atmosphere. You're basically taking the same concept of golf but instead of tee time you have track time," Petrie said.

The members-only clubhouse will have a bar, possibly with alcohol, equipped with several plasma screen TVs that will show footage shot by cameras on the race course. There will be an aerial viewing platform above. A massage room and jacuzzi will help drivers iron out those kinks. A lap pool is planned along with men's and women's locker rooms. A kid's play area is in the works. No restaurant is currently planned, Petrie said there will be an area for people to have barbecues.

The new owners added another 1.5 miles of track to extend the course.

"We can still utilize one track for driver training, we can always do that throughout the week and the other track would be dedicated to a member," Petrie said.

Members can use the track up to 16 days per month with the availability to work it into their schedule.

"For years we and many other tracks, you'd rent the track on a weekend basis or a daily basis. Different car clubs, Porsche clubs, Ferrari clubs, Corvette clubs, different event companies would come in. You'd go through the same manner at your driver's meeting, have to go through all the process week after week and do the same thing, versus when you have dedicated members when they're initiated in, they understand what the rules are and then you can just come at your convenience basically."

Petrie said Spring Mountain Motor Sports is the no. 1 dealer of radical cars in the world, what he called "the perfect-built race car."

Spring Mountain Motor Sports currently boasts 94 members. The initial goal was to increase membership to 300, he said. The vast majority are from outside the state, some ship their cars from cold weather climates during the winter, Petrie said.

"As the need is there, we'll continue to build," he said.

Some members don't even have cars yet, Petrie said.

"The majority of the members have the car and they're just looking for a place to play. In a sense we kind of call it a safe playground, so you don't have to do your racing on the street. It's a safe environment, a controlled environment because everyone's in the same state of mind as far as what's going on out there."

For this weekend's event, Roc Linkov, events manager for the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Ky., was briefing about 100 instructors and drivers in the classroom at about 7:30 a.m. on a Saturday. He told the group the instructors would start students at only half throttle the first few laps to give students teaching time before they have to worry about all the turning, shifting and braking.

"A little Deadman's Curve never hurt us," Linkov said. But he added, "for the instructors the purpose is not to scare the living daylights out of the students. It's to keep them alive. The best way of doing that is not at full throttle. I know everybody is trying to go out there and set a new land record."

Petrie said some members have completely street stock cars, others have full bore race cars.

"When you get onto your track time, each weekend is determined differently based on who really is attending. For some people you definitely have people with more experience, who generally get a little bit more aggressive. For some people this is their relax time so they have different run groups basically, with more of a casual drive. So it's not a case where you're getting intimidated and forced off the track."

Some people just like to stop out at the track, wheel their car out of the garage and work on it without even taking a spin, like Las Vegan Mike McCarthy was doing this Saturday morning.

"I was just out at VIR, which is the be all and end all of motor sports country clubs, Virginia International Raceway and I've just noticed how much ground we've made up on them in the last year and a half," McCarthy said. "They're all the rage for the last two years and they're great. They're great for guys who just like to track their cars and have fun."

"Kind of when I bought my membership it was a leap of faith because there was just a hole in the ground here. But it was pretty reasonable and boy they've come across, the garages, the Corvete schools, the clubhouse," McCarthy said. He bought his membership a year and a half ago, number 009.

"I should add it's one of the best tracks in the West to drive in. I'm kind of partial to Button Willow (Calif.)," he said. "But this one's right here. This one's as good as any one in the country. It can hold up against Road America, which I think is the best track in North America."

Looking to the future, Petrie said the drivers need a lot more rooms in Pahrump, especially during special events. But there's no talk of building a hotel at this point.

"We're pretty limited here," Petrie said. "We also have some acres on the far side on the south. There's another 20 acres we're looking at and there's different things we're looking at. Potentially we're looking at a go-kart track."