There are race cars.
There are stunt cars.
And then there are 15-year-old minivans that somebody bought on Marketplace and decided needed to see eight feet of air.
Welcome to Van Prix.
If you've stumbled across a video of Dodge Caravans, Honda Odysseys and other former family haulers rubbing doors around a racetrack before launching off a ramp, you're not witnessing a breakdown in civilization.
Well, not entirely.
You're watching one of the finest forms of motorsport ever created.
SO WHAT IS VAN PRIX?
The basic formula is beautiful in its stupidity:
Take a bunch of ordinary minivans.
Put them on a short racetrack.
Add a jump.
Race them.
The exact course changes depending on the event, but the ingredients remain remarkably consistent: minivans, contact, airborne vehicles, scattered body panels and a group of drivers who clearly misunderstood what the engineers had in mind when they designed sliding doors.
At the New England 900 at Stafford Motor Speedway, Van Prix has been run as a 10-lap race on the track's Mini-Mile. The course has included a jump on the backstretch that competitors must hit at least once. In 2024, organizers also added a tire chicane just to make operating a damaged minivan at speed slightly more complicated.
Parts fall off.
Suspensions reconsider their career choices.
The crowd loses its mind.
That's Van Prix.
WHERE DID ALL THESE FLYING MINIVANS COME FROM?
Van Prix has become part of the wonderfully strange racing universe surrounding Channel 199, Travis Pastrana, Cleetus McFarland, Jim York and a rotating collection of people willing to race vehicles that have absolutely no business being race vehicles.
It's appeared alongside Crown Vic races at events such as the New England 900, and Channel 199 has taken the concept to other tracks as its own featured attraction. Corrigan Oil Speedway, for example, promoted a Channel 199 Van Prix featuring Travis Pastrana and Jim York.
And apparently the idea has legs.
Or at least four deeply unhappy struts.
Road & Track described the modern Van Prix formula as road-legal minivans attacking a small oval with a portable ramp capable of sending one roughly eight feet into the air before it returns to Earth on what is, importantly, not a landing ramp.
That's a crucial detail.
This isn't motocross.
You go up.
Gravity handles the rest.
WHY MINIVANS?
Because that's the whole point.
Nobody looks at a purpose-built race car flying through the air and asks why it's there.
Put a family minivan in the same situation and suddenly everyone has questions.
These things were designed for grocery runs, soccer practice, family vacations and getting yelled at for spilling something in the third row.
Van Prix gives them a second life.
A shorter life, probably.
But a much more interesting one.
There is something deeply satisfying about watching an ordinary vehicle become extraordinary simply because somebody was willing to make an exceptionally questionable decision with it.
That's basically the American Stunt Society philosophy.
JIM YORK: HERE FOR THE CRASH REEL
Of course, Van Prix fits Jim York perfectly.
Channel 199 describes Jim as a businessman turned amateur stuntman who races everything from Tuff Trucks to minivans and Baja Bugs. Their description of his approach is pretty straightforward: he's “here for the crash reel.”
That's also why we're here.
Winning is cool.
Finishing is respectable.
But if the crowd audibly gasps and somebody immediately asks, “Did you get that on video?” you've probably done something right.
THIS IS THE KIND OF RACING WE CAN GET BEHIND
Van Prix isn't about proving which manufacturer built the ultimate minivan.
It isn't about shaving three tenths off a lap.
And nobody is leaving with a Formula 1 contract.
It's racing as entertainment.
It's friends doing dumb things with cars.
It's spectators standing up every time somebody points a Dodge Caravan toward the ramp.
It's the perfect combination of competition and spectacle—and it's exactly the kind of thing American Stunt Society exists to celebrate.
So the next time somebody asks:
What is Van Prix?
Tell them it's minivan racing with jumps.
Then show them the video.
It'll make sense immediately.
Welcome to the crash reel.
You don't need a minivan or a complete disregard for suspension components to join American Stunt Society.
Put some ASS on your face. Wear it proudly. Do a stunt.