As with many young lads growing up as the motor sports world was rapidly advancing in the 1960’s, I was totally fascinated with just about anything sporting wheels—especially if there was a powerplant involved. And especially if it involved head-to-head competition with such devices.

While not exactly being raised in a household favoring such a paradigm, I did have a sufficient amount of positive experiences with more distant relatives, close friends and neighbors. This enabled me to gain the impetus required to achieve the “escape velocity” necessary to make a go of it in the new and exciting world of motor vehicles.

We had a family friend we’ll call “Uncle D”, who was one of the first people I can remember laying a fairly impressive, first-hand, full-contact high-performance driving revelation on me. He took my younger sister, older brother and I out in his early sixties Ford Galaxy Convertible (it was pretty much brand-spanking new at that point) for a “joy-ride” around the streets of San Francisco, CA. It soon became an “overjoy-ride”—as he engaged in a series of tire-smoking launches, connected with some zero-G hill cresting, and power-slide cornering! This was before the advent of seat-belts  so—with the exception of my brother, who was fairly secure in the passenger front bucket seat—my sister and I were experiencing the full effect of the amusement park dynamic in the back seat!

Fortunately for Uncle D, this also predated the Child Protective Services Bureau, otherwise he most assuredly would have been called to task for “child endangerment”!  We, the fortunate “endangered”, would have argued in his favor, however—so much fun we had on that “Pre-Bullit” romp!

Aside from that experience, some of my earliest recollections involve the wide variety of performance vehicles in my immediate neighborhood of Walteria, CA.

We had everything from gearheads with modified ‘50’s Chevy’s and seminal “Rat Rods”, musclecars (note worthily a rally orange Pontiac GTO “Judge” and a Hertz Shelby GT350, with its gold racing stripes on black paint), and sports cars of many stripes (early Jaguar XK’s and MG’s come to mind). I remember a teacher at my grade school rolling in a red Mustang fastback, and one (that I didn’t particularly like) cruising a very likeable silver Corvair Monza Spyder!

Punctuating all of this motoring overload were periodic visits by my uncle and cousin as they were on their way to Riverside Raceway (R.I.P.) with some form of race-car in tow. The orange Formula Ford they brought by one summer was a definite highlight here. To imagine that someone related to me had an actual open-wheeled racing car parked in front of my home base!

Then there was my childhood friend just around the corner. We hit it off trading tricks we were learning on our Schwinn Stingrays—not realizing at the time that we were actually participating in the creation of a biking genre, which would eventually become known as Bicycle Motocross (BMX). Not uncoincidentally, his pop was big into off-road motorcycling, and it was a “family thing” for them at that point in time.

One of the highlights of that friendship was being invited to trek with them to the Mojave Desert, in the fall of 1972, to witness the start of the legendary Barstow-to-Vegas motorcycle race. Of course, the plan was to make a long weekend of it; so we were equipped with motor-home accommodation—and a trailer full of dirtbikes to test out and explore with.

There were many highlights to this trip, the most memorable being a ride out to the “smoke bomb”—a pile of worn auto and truck tires, placed on a hill about five miles away from the starting line, then set ablaze to serve as a marker for the start of the actual course—in between the start of each class grouping. (There is a depiction of this in the Bruce Brown movie “…On Any Sunday”.) The grouping we watched from this vantage point must have included not less than a few hundred riders, collectively making a sound like a low-flying 747 coming at us across the valley!

Yeah, some would even consider the RECOUNTING of this experience as politically incorrect and environmentally unsound—let alone it’s actual occurrence—but there it is, in the history books (and indelibly etched into my memory)!

Stay tuned for Part Two, and more accounts from my automotive “Wonder Years”…

Phil ran a successful independent repair shop on the West Coast for close to 20 years, working over a decade before that at both dealer and independent repair shops. He is presently semi-retired from the business of auto repair, but still keeps his hand in things as a consultant and in his personal garage.

Since the Mosport footage was so well received  here’s another one from the archives. Sebring, 1965, with some very crude dash cam-style action.

And now a treat for the weekend. An original documentary about the Players 200 race at Mosport in 1962. Jo Bonnier, Masten Gregory and other racing legends all appear. Who doesn’t long for the days when men were men and cigarette companies were the largest sponsor of motor racing events?

Shifting gears into the warmer seasons affords the motoring aficionado many joyous opportunities.

Up here in the Eastern Sierra, with the threat of big winter storms passed, road crews sweep off the gravel concoction they’d spread during the thick of it—allowing for more spirited driving (and additionally, in my case, riding the superbike). Snow finally melts in the forested areas, opening up the gravel roads, Jeep trails, and whoop-de-doo punctuated singletrack to all manner of Off-Highway Vehicles (I like to rock a two-stroke dirtbike for this application).

The opportunity for really epic road trips can also be realized.

Often, my road trips are done on two-wheels (on a superbike, not Chitwood-style in an automobile!), and involve—often as the focal point—some form of motor racing event, along the way.

Which brings us to our topic for the week.

While my experience in the actual participation of sanctioned motor racing is fairly limited, I’ve had some memorable ones, nonetheless.

I imagine that anyone as involved in wrenching on automobiles as I have been will at some point cross paths with the racing world, even as I have.

So, for the next couple of weeks, I’ll be relating some of the more interesting stories I’ve had, courtesy of the portal extant from my auto repair connections.

The first one I’ll relate, while by no means near the beginning of events chronological, seems to be the appropriate choice.

When I was transitioning into my own auto repair business, I did a relatively brief stint sharing shop space in a garage that serviced mostly German cars. The proprietor—who I will refer to as “Joe”—had some interesting racing connections going back to when he lived in an “Eastern Bloc” country, some years before. (Hopefully, I’ll one day be able to relate many stories about my experience working with Joe—especially regarding his “Old Country” wisdom.)

Apparently, Vasek Polak—who can, among other cool things, be considered a central figure in post WWII sports car racing here in the U.S. (esp. involving the Porsche brand and here on the West Coast)—was instrumental in getting Joe and his family here to The States.

Not long after Vasek died, Joe came by my shop and invited me to a sort of underground open house/ estate sale at Vasek’s race warehouse in Torrance, CA. Sounded like a good idea to me, so we went later that day.

To say it was a revelatory experience would probably be an understatement! There was stuff of all sorts, spanning Vasek’s entire saga in motor racing: boxes of used Speedster and 550 components, vintage Martini & Rossi promo items, including racing calendars, complete racecars and rolling chassis’ from a variety of classes—more cool material goods than I can recall, right now.

But to me, the real mindblow was what had to be at least a half-dozen COMPLETE 917 (as in the boxer-twelve turbo-powered nineoneseven) engine/ transaxle units, stacked in sturdy wire-mesh cages opposite the race car “display”. Even then—or maybe, especially then—as vintage road racing was approaching a zenith in popularity, I understood the gravity of what my eyes were taking in. I mean, what were the odds that so many of what had become so rare and important an item in auto racing history could be in the same place at the same time?!!

Not to mention the “street value” of such a stash—in whatever currency you care to apply to it!!

I don’t know where all of that wonderful stuff ended up (I did snag one of those 1972 M & R racing calendars, which is still on regular display), but undoubtedly the proceeds from its sale went to honorable use. The V. Polak name is on display prominently at the local medical center, for instance.

But while it was being used for its first intended purpose, it made automotive history, for sure!

Phil ran a successful independent repair shop on the West Coast for close to 20 years, working over a decade before that at both dealer and independent repair shops. He is presently semi-retired from the business of auto repair, but still keeps his hand in things as a consultant and in his personal garage

If you live in the Greater Toronto Area and hate me despite having never met me in person, I am inviting you to come kick my ass – at karting.

In 2011, I competed in the Mosport International Karting Arrive and Drive Series, and this year I’ll be back at it again (after sitting out 2012 to spend my weekends with my then girlfriend).  The karting series held at Mosport is one of the best mosport bargains in North America. Registration is $149, while each race cost $60. For all that, you get a full season of karting (May-October) at one of North America’s great historic tracks.

The karts are brand new CRG chassis for 2013, with 6.5 horsepower 125cc 4-stroke Honda motors. Speeds top out at about 50 mph, which feels frighteningly fast without a seatbelt or any kind of protection from the elements. You will need a helmet and a karting suit to compete, and I highly recommend gloves if you don’t want to flay the skin off your palms.

I’ll be competing in the Sunday Afternoon group, and any TTAC readers are invited to come out and try and beat me. Be warned, I have been engaging in a fitness program to ensure success for this year – though it’s more Nigel Mansell than Michael Schumacher.

Sajeev

One of the more (in)famous vehicles in junk car racing recently visited the big boneyard in the sky. It’s particularly sad for me, as this vehicle helped me back into the driver’s seat when I needed all the help I could get. The tenacious handling, phenomenal power complete with a BULLITT-worthy soundtrack in a brown station wagon; it was all positively insane. A sad tale indeed, but worth sharing from start to finish. So here’s Mr. Brian Pollock, owner of this brutally competitive Ford Fairmont Wagon, to tell the tale.

Brian writes:

It started by accident: I was killing time browsing a local Mustang forum and saw a post titled “The 24 hours of LeMons is coming to Texas”. I confirmed the information and called my friend Dave, who bluntly told me, “I won’t let you not do this.” Next call was to another friend, Marty, because he’d been autocrossing before and we needed a guy who had some idea how to make a car turn. We applied for the race and started talking about potential cars. We settled on the world’s rattiest fox Mustang. The car was terrible in every way, but it finished the race in a remarkable 35th place and we were hooked.

By the end of the second race we had figured out how to make the car stop and turn and were talking about building a second car instead of a V8 swap in the Mustang. The hunt was on for a cheap, unusual Fox body. I really had my heart set on either a fox LTD, a Fairmont sedan, or the holy grail of oddball foxes, the 1980-82 fox-box Thunderbird. I ignored the guy who contacted me with the wagon while I waited for something else, but time, the lack of a better (worse?) option and the wagon’s steadily lowering price convinced me otherwise. One trip to Waco and $150 made it mine.

Click here to view the embedded video.

(Start the video at 2:15 for maximum effect.)

Now we needed parts, lots of them. How do you build a fast LeMons car on anything resembling a $500 budget? You do research, lots of it. You figure out what parts from what depreciated wrecks will make your depreciated wreck better. You figure out who the nearest car crusher is and you follow the fluctuating price of scrap steel. You live on Craigslist. You buy cars from sketchy tweekers so you can get the right master cylinder. Then you list that car on Craigslist so his buddies can buy a fender, or window, or something, so when it makes its final trip across the scales you get back in the black. You do that a lot. I stopped counting, but my running guess is we’ve been through somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 parts cars to build three LeMons cars.

Sometimes you’ll be forced to buy used car parts instead of used parts cars. Try to avoid this. If you can’t, buy in bulk. I needed a set of pistons and found what I was looking for in a damaged short block. I bought the whole short block, two aluminum intakes, a pair of wheels, a nitrous system, and a Mustang. After selling what I didn’t need, I got what I wanted for free and turned a profit.

Now you have to figure out how to assemble these bits into a car. Learn to weld. You’ll need piles of metallic detritus. Our seat brackets are made from frame sections from a wrecked trailer. Rear spring locators are old header collectors. The sheet metal covering the fuel cell is a ’69 Camaro hood. The access door has been a tool box, a fruitcake pan, and a metal box from a nut and bolt assortment. Another team covers their cell with the top of an old dryer. License plates are invaluable, we use them for everything, including the switch panel.

Your labor is free. Use it: we put around four-hundred man hours a year maintaining the car when we’re not racing.

We debuted the Fairmont wagon in October of 2009. We blew up the motor in practice Friday. We worked all night assembling another and getting it in the car. It blew up mid-day. By Sunday morning we had a borrowed car repaired and through tech, but I was too tired to drive. We won the LeMons “I Got Screwed” award.

For what seemed like forever, the Fairmont spent more time with the engine out than it did on track. It took until November of the following year to finish a race. When it did, our 22nd place finish came with the top prize in LeMons, “The Index of Effluency” and a check for $1501.

2011 Racing Season: it started with a series of unpredictable oil pressure issues. In three races we had one oil pump seize, one break, and we mysteriously lost oil pressure on the track but got it back while putting the car on the trailer. By June we had the Fairmont in pretty good shape but our “Arrive and Drive” drivers were lacking. By the end of the year we had our act somewhat together. We finished the year with a class “B” win and 11th overall.

2012 Racing Season: the year we almost made it. At Texas World Speedway (TWS) in February we led for the first four hours and had two laps on the field when a rear shock broke. One driver spun, and a control arm bolt broke. We finished 4th and won class B again this time with a $500 check. In March, we were in 2nd place in Chumpcar on the first day (Saturday) when we burned through the brakes: we finished 7th overall. We were leading day two’s (Sunday) race when another weird oil pressure issue popped up. We parked the Fairmont and found a cracked pick up screen swinging in the pan.

May brought LeMons to Eagle’s Canyon Raceway (ECR). We did an emergency re-ring job instead of practice, and had driver issues. I never looked at the final results. September in Houston had rain. I should mention that a heavy, stiffly sprung station wagon is undriveable in the rain. In the wet we were fighting to stay in the low 20s, when it dried up we dragged up to 8th place. Chumpcar came back to TWS in December. We just weren’t competitive there with that series: Saturday 12th place, Sunday DNF with a broken T-5 transmission.

Which brings us to the end of the line: Lap 2 of the 24 Hours of LeMons season ender at ECR. After a minor in-and-out penalty for going 2 wheels off, we were in 3rd place and about to lap the leader. We came up on him fast and spooked the driver into missing his turn in point.

Click here to view the embedded video.

He went wide and looked like he was giving up the inside line. He lost control and came across the track in to the Fairmont’s left rear tire. The crash did extensive damage to the rear end and rear suspension mounts. We limped the car around the track until mid-day Sunday when it finally became undriveable.

In the end it wasn’t the crash that took out the wagon. The 1978 Fairmont was Ford’s clean sheet design during a fuel crisis, and the nationwide 55 mph speed limit. I doubt the fox chassis was intended to peg its 85 mph speedometer, certainly not to come down the steep banking at Texas World Speedway at a stomping 135 miles per hour.

Three years of racing just wore out the car. Everything from the cage forward bent, shifted, and sagged. The car droops when it goes on the lift and collapses when it comes down. It’s just not safe to drive anymore. Marty summed it up best while disassembling it:

“I’ve had more fun with this car than anything else in my life.”

We built the car, not as a joke, per se, but to be preposterous. We knew we could make it fast, and we knew we didn’t want another Mustang. There were 11 Mustangs in our Mustang’s last race. From the beginning we set out to have a winning car, but mechanical issues held us back for a long time. We prided ourselves on being able to out run the sports cars.

One of my favorite moments was coming up on a pack of three 944s and two Miatas just before a multi-turn complex at ECR. It took me two corners to pass 4 of the cars and one more to get the 5th. I don’t consider myself to be anything more than a competent driver, so I loved being able to get off line and pass cars that have some business being on a race track.

People generally loved the car…but some hated it.

We were even accused of cheating! Ratted out for our roller rockers when the motor was disassembled on the trailer, in a race where we didn’t complete more than 25 laps, of all things! We had the fox body’s historical successor, the Taurus SHO teams vote us for “The People’s Curse,” which Jay Lamm quickly, logically ignored.

I guess people couldn’t understand how a station wagon could out handle a Porsche.

They didn’t figure the hundreds of hours we put into the car in a year and our creative ways of solving problems, they assumed we were throwing money at it.

We did get a lot of positive comments on the car. At every race we would meet new people who wanted to introduce themselves and talk about the car.  (including myself – SM) I heard a number of people laugh as it rolled out on the track, only to be amazed once they saw it run. We got word from strangers all over the country who loved the car and wanted to drive it someday.

The comments from friends who heard of its demise meant a lot to me.

Todd Nelson: This is a sad day indeed…for you. For the rest of us, we will no longer have to live with the image of being overtaken – often rapidly – by an old, brown, beat-up relic from yesteryear…with tremendous horsepower. I’ll pour one out with ya at the next race.

Douglas Narby: I remember the first time I saw the wagon (from our 240SX) I said on the radio “I am going to pass this wagon”. A more experienced teammate came back with something along the lines of “good luck with that”. He was right. Great job while it lasted, y’all!

Mark Da Silva: The wagon was amazing! You guys know the huge amount of time that damn boat made our BMW E30 work overtime just to keep up! I had the privilege to drive it at ECR too, so it’s a shame to put the car into retirement!

 

 Good bye, Fairmont Wagon.  We’ll miss you. – SM

Have you ever seen a supercharger kit that costs more than the car in question?  TRD’s new supercharger kit for the Scion FR-S costs an astonishing $26,000, more than the MSRP of the FR-S itself.

The supercharger is meant primarily for the SCCA Prielli World Challenge Series, but for it to be legal, it must be offered for sale. Prospective buyers are required to order a minimum of two kits, and must supply their own engine management. Presumably, this is done to keep the kit out of the hands of the “IMPORT 2NR” crowd, but this still seems like an exorbitant sum for a mid-level sports car racing series.

Rising star Evan York shared this on Facebook, noting that the crash was due to “tucking”. But before you start picturing Ted Levine in Silence of the Lambs, let’s figure out what that really means, and why it’s done…

The crash happens because the driver has elected to “tuck” behind the wheel for an aero boost. Nearly every serious kart competitor does this at some point, because the benefits are very real. Even in recreational rental karts, particularly at longer outdoor venues, tucking is the difference between competing and merely observing. I usually tuck by crouching behind the wheel to eye level, but this fellow takes the more aggressive step of putting his head farther down and letting the airflow over the top of his helmet work for, not against him. As a result, he’s doing 114 km/h, which is about 70 mph, when he hits the kart coming out of the pitlane…

…which brings us to the controversial aspect of the video. Most trackday rats think of safe pitlane exits as a shared responsibility between the flagger who waves drivers out onto the track after checking for traffic, the driver entering the track, and the drivers who are already on the front straight and making passing maneuvers. In racing, however, all responsibility is given to the driver who is entering the track. The flagger doesn’t check for safe entrance and the drivers on the track have a right to all the road on their side of the blend line.

I’ve seen situations like this happen in open lapping days too many times to count. Since “tucking” isn’t necessary when you’re driving your GT-R (or Miata) at a track, keep your head up and watch the blend line. It’s made of paint, not Armco, and it won’t keep someone from pulling out in front of you. Even the pros make mistakes…

Click here to view the embedded video.

Some positions are dream jobs. Let’s say that you’re a car guy and that you like to paint and that you also happen to live in France. What could be a better job than being the official artist of the 24 Hours of LeMans race? François Bruère is that car guy and that’s his dream job. I first came across François while he was setting up his display at the automotive art show & sale that was part of the Concours of America at St. John’s festivities in suburban Detroit. Bruère has spent 30 years refining a style that combines hyperrealistic renderings of automobiles with sepia toned backgrounds, often historic, that give his work a distinctive, immediately recognizable style.

In addition to showing his works regularly at the Concours, Bruère has also been commissioned by the Concours to produce a poster of this year’s two Best of Show winners. The American winner was a 1933 Chrysler Imperial CL Sport Phaeton owned by Joseph and Margie Cassini, and the Foreign winner was also a 1933 model, a Delage D8S Coupe Roadster owned by the Patterson Collection. In a manner of speaking Bruère’s painting is one artist rendering the work of other artists, though they worked with steel and chrome instead of paint and canvas. Both of those cars have custom bodies. The D8S was was a design exercise, a concept car if you will, a collaboration between Delage and one of the most prestigious French coachbuilders, Carrosserie de Villars, for the 1934 Paris auto salon. The Chrysler has a body made by the equally prestigious American coachbuilder LeBaron. The car and its provenance are unique. By 1933 LeBaron was part of the Briggs body company and it was being run by designer Ralph Roberts, who would go on to design Chrysler’s dual cowl Newport show cars. This Imperial Sport Phaeton (it’s not quite a dual cowl body since the rear passenger’s windshield cranks down into the thin panel behind the front seat) was customized by LeBaron per Roberts’ direction and given by him as a present for his wife. An automotive rara avis : a one of one designer’s car, an already custom car further customized by the factory. The Imperial was part of the esteemed collection of the Milhous brothers and the Cassinis paid $1.21 million for it last February.

The Chrysler dominates the painting, sitting in front of the Delage in the foreground while in the background is the valet entrance and bell tower of St. John’s, a former seminary. Because of Bruère’s sepia tone backgrounds, the Chrysler particularly stands out since the white Delage tends to blend in. It’s not surprising that the artist highlighted the Chrysler. It’s an impressive car, one of the first American cars to have a hood that extended to the base of the windshield. Roberts had earlier done a proposal for Lincoln with that cowl-less feature that had been rejected by Edsel Ford so he just parked it in the garage at LeBaron’s Detroit facility. Later, when Walter P. Chrysler was at the same garage inspecting a proposal for the Imperial, he saw the Lincoln and told Roberts that was what he wanted. Already sleek by 1930s standards, Roberts customized his wife’s car with lengthened front fenders and skirted fenders in the back, lowered headlights, “French disc” wheel covers, and a radiator shell that was painted, not chromed. Also, Roberts moved the sidemounted spare tires to the back of the car.

More pics here.

Though I think he has the color a bit more aqua than the darker steel greyish green of my own photos of the car, Bruère captures the magnificent Chrysler quite well. If you want a copy of the poster, you’ll have to wait until next year’s concours. In the meantime, though, you can buy signed prints of the poster Bruère did of an Auburn roadster for the 2006 show as well as other historic show posters at the Concours’ web site store, starting next week. Bruère sells prints of his other works at his own website, Orpheograff.com.

Ronnie Schreiber edits Cars In Depth, a realistic perspective on cars & car culture and the original 3D car site. If you found this post worthwhile, you can dig deeper at Cars In Depth. If the 3D thing freaks you out, don’t worry, all the photo and video players in use at the site have mono options. Thanks for reading – RJS

TTAC has some great Mustang coverage coming your way in about a week, including multiple tests of two different Shelby GT500 models ranging from a 168-mph blast down the back straight of Virginia International Raceway to a pedestrian-frightening growl through the streets of downtown Toronto. We’re busy writing apology notes to Ford for the state of the tires on the VIR car — are those cords? — so in the meantime we’ll distract you with this question: What’s faster around a racetrack: a “drift car” or a “race car”? In this video, NASA regional director Chris Cobetto and awesome drift dude Vaughn Gittin, Jr. try to create some suspense out of a foregone conclusion. There’s a more exciting video — for road racers, anyway — after the jump.

Most racers will spend that entire video yelling “COME ON, JUST PUT A FENDER ON THE GUY ALREADY, YOU’VE DONE IT TO EVERYBODY ELSE IN NASA!” Just kidding, Mr. Cobetto. If nothing else, the video shows how difficult it is to make road racing look exciting to an audience which can’t feel just how frightening it can be to ride in a fully-prepped vehicle on the limit of grip. One mistake and you’re in big trouble. Oh, do we have video of something like that? Yes we do:

Click here to view the embedded video.

The already fragile egos of HPDE drivers are about to take another hit. Shelley, the autonomous Audi TT-S developed by Stanford, has tried her first lapping day, and the results were promising.

Shelley is capable of lapping in Thunderhill in well under two and a half minutes, which won’t win her any SCCA trophies. According to the article at Singularity Hub, however, she’s within a few seconds of “professional drivers” already. The exact laptimes aren’t available, so it’s impossible to know if she is running 2:29 or 2:14.

The Stanford people say that Shelley is particularly good at judging corner entry speed — which is interesting because that’s exactly the task that most novice track drivers get very wrong. In fact, you can argue that accurate corner estimation is the single most important task a racer faces.

Watching the very short snippets of in-car video is interesting because you can clearly see the car working the wheel back and forth mid-corner to find out the available grip. This little rocking motion is common to racing drivers everywhere, particularly in wet conditions. Note, too, that the Audi’s nose doesn’t change direction when this happens; that’s because, as I’ve shown my students many harrowing times, when you’re already at the right speed for the corner, turning the steering wheel more accomplishes nothing.

Shelley’s now run Pikes Peak and Thunderhill. If she can just make it down to Pebble Beach next year, she’ll have accomplished more than pretty much every working motoring journo in the business. Thank G-d she can’t write.

Yet.

Of course, we have no idea what kind of car this engine will go into, regardless of whether it’s a street car or a race car. We can’t really see a diesel CX-5 race car tearing up the track. A new Mazda6 may be a possibility. God forbid it winds up being a Miata.

“Light and shade” the man said, that man being the man, Jimmy Page. From a race that barely qualifies as a race, we go to racing at its two-fisted best… or worst.

The video above, taken from the Traqmate and rollcage camera of SCCA racer Kent Carter, will reward your attention. It demonstrates a lot of what is wonderful about small-bore amateur racing in just two minutes. There’s a bunch of actual on-the-limit driving, in cars for which the drivers are personally responsible. There’s passing, re-passing, skill, and anger. Finally, there’s a bleak reminder that you can get hurt doing this stuff.

Click the jump for comments from the driver.

Quoth Dr. Carter,

It’s a sad end to a great car. The JohnPhillipsRacePrep #91 was one of the first Spec Miata’s built back in 2004. The car was built by Tim Buck (formerly of Mazda now with Traxxis) and AWR Racing in California. While hard to get in and out, the cage is solid and safe… as proven again today. I acquired the car in late 2005 and have campaigned it in SCCA Spec Miata in the John Phillips Race Prep stable since then. John and I will miss this little Miata. Typical of Mazdas, this car has always been solid, fast and reliable (as well as safe). I have to give a shout out to the folks at Safecraft for the fabulous harnesses that kept me in my place and to HANS and Arai for keeping my head on my shoulders. There isn’t a single part of my body that isn’t sore today, but I’m really quite well and happy that’s the limit of my injuries. Also, a bit thanks to all the volunteers in the SCCA for working corners so we can race and especially to the wonderful team at Hallett.

It was a hard fought weekend at the SCCA BF Goodrich Super Tour at Hallett Motor Racing Circuit. This is a beautiful little track nestled in Oklahoma where Connie Stephens and crew run a great event. I have always run among the top 5 there. This time, however, I qualified poorly (19th) with a very pushy car on sticker Hoosiers. John Phillips had made major adjustments to the car between qualifying and the race to nix the understeer and by the first turn of lap 1, I knew I had a horse that could run for the front. By the beginning of lap 2, I was in the top 10 but I followed Adam Poland off in turn 1 and fell well back in the field. Determined to fight for a good finish, I rapidly picked off car after car culminating in the late-braking pass in Turn 10 on cars #62 and #73. The torque of the 99+ car allowed #73 to pull up along side me down the straight. I was fully prepared to run side-by-side into 1 with car #73, but never got the chance. His sharp move right punted me off the course and into the tires at a little under 90mph. This is the danger of falling back in the field in an amateur event: the quality of the drivers falls off rapidly in the back half of the field. Such is amateur racing!

A word about the steering wheel. This car had one prior high-speed encounter with a tire-wall in the past that left me with 9 screws in my right hand from the steering wheel. This may have weakened the shaft. While the internet is all abuzz about better welding techniques that would have prevented the steering shaft from failing, I’m thankful it did at that moment. Stronger isn’t always better. That said, this driver must learn when to give it up and take his paws off the wheel!

Glad you’re okay, Kent, and I look forward to seeing you back on track!

Introduction • Part 1 • Part 2 • Part 3 • Part 4 • Part 5 • Part 6 • Part 7 • Part 8 • Part 9 • Part 10 • Part 11 • Part 12 • Part 13 • Part 14 • Part 15 • Part 16 • Part 17 • Part 18 • Part 19

Garth Stein is a better driver than you. Really. In 2003, he won the SCCA Northwest points championship in his Spec Miata before a crash while driving in the rain, no less, ended those Senna dreams. The novel that sprang from those experiences is a lot like his little Miata: a bit cutesy on the outside but equipped with such a perfect balance of heart and engineering that you can’t help but go back for more. Maybe that’s why it’s been on the New York Times best-seller list for over 120 weeks and Patrick Dempsey, more race car driver than actor now, has picked it up for the big screen.

I should mention that the story is written from the perspective of a dog. But, so was White Fang and The Call of the Wild and I dare you to tell the old oyster pirate Jack London he wrote a kids books. Driven by his desire to be more than a dog, Enzo, the puppy protagonist in Racing in the Rain, is the perfect vehicle for Stein to explore racing, philosophy and humanity. Stein explains that Mongolians believe good dogs will be reincarnated as men when they’re ready. Enzo’s owner and semi-professional racing driver, Denny Swift, serves as a model human, whose skill at navigating obstacles on the racetrack translates well into real life where he battles for custody of his daughter, a dying wife and trumped-up rape charges. Denny’s racing mantras, like “the car goes where the eyes go,” and the intense, accurate driving scenes help the reader to learn along with Enzo that lessons learned from racing–courage and balance, for example–are just as applicable to life.

Stein’s writing is fresh, darkly comic and devoid of cynicism. His deep appreciation of cars and racing culture makes this a perfect choice for racing enthusiasts and car guys. More importantly, wives and girlfriends of car guys will gain a deeper understanding of what makes their significant other tick while enjoying a heartstring-tugging, Marley and Me meets Le Mans, high-revving good read.

Garth Stein pitted long enough to chat about the novel:

TTAC: A dog named Enzo?

Stein: I think that car people will get the connection, it may be a bit overdone if I had to explain Enzo Ferrari. When I first started writing the book, Enzo was Juan Pablo, after Juan Pablo Montoya, but clearly Enzo is the better name for a dog.

TTAC: Any stories about racing in the rain?

Stein: Only that I crashed my last race car during a downpour. If you’re in a race in the Northwest, you really need to be comfortable on a wet track, so that title, The Art of Racing in the Rain came from Don Kitch, Jr. who runs a race school out of Seattle.

TTAC: Have you raced at all the tracks mentioned in the book?

Stein: No, in fact, I met one of the owners of Thunderhill at a reading I did in Sacramento and he said, “Boy that was just great, you really know the track well.” I kind of bluffed because I’ve never driven Thunderhill. Basically, I studied some in-car camera footage from a buddy of mine who’s raced there several times and another friend lent me his track notes and I wrote the scene. I’ve always wanted to race there. A dream of mine is to race the 25 Hours of Thunderhill. I kind of had to bluff my way through that, and I guess it worked.

TTAC: What has Enzo learned that readers haven’t yet?

Stein: The whole Enzo philosophy, which is, “that which you manifest is before you,” means we have to take control of our destiny. If we allow other people to dictate where we are, we are no longer in control of what we’re doing. If we maintain control, at least we can pull out of the spins in life.

TTAC: Ayrton Senna plays a large role in Enzo’s spiritual development. Any insight there?

Stein: Senna was a very religious man, but this book was more of a universal spiritualism rather than a specific religion. People ask me if I’ve studied Zen Buddhism, the answer is no. When I was racing, my buddies and I would goof around that we could apply the same rules that we used on the racetrack to life. You know, “Don’t worry about something that’s already happened, you can’t change it. Only worry about the things in front of you that you can change.” If we do that in our daily lives, then we’ll be good fathers, husbands, etc. Really, that’s where Enzo came from.

TTAC: I see “Go Enzo” stickers plastered on race cars now.

Stein: It’s very popular with the racing crowd because I think a lot of club racers feel somewhat misunderstood by their friends and family. You know, “Why would you spend all of this time, energy and money to make this sport?” And I think this gives them a voice. You know, “Here, read this book. You’ll understand why.”

TTAC: How did your wife take it?

Stein: She laughed when she read the book. She said, “Oh, now I understand why you were doing all that racing; you were doing research.” Which is totally not the case. I was doing it for four years and then I wrote the book.

TTAC: You still racing?

Stein: I’m not racing currently, though I certainly enjoy it and hanging out with the racers. Talking shop and stuff like that. I was just at the Grand-Am Awards ceremony last month and I got to present an award to professional racers and team owners. It’s been a lot of fun. I mean, racing’s fun. There’s nothing like the adrenaline rush of the green flag.

Introduction • Part 1 • Part 2 • Part 3 • Part 4 • Part 5 • Part 6 • Part 7 • Part 8 • Part 9 • Part 10 • Part 11 • Part 12 • Part 13 • Part 14 • Part 15 • Part 16 • Part 17 • Part 18