Race Car Stuff

I know it has been a long time since I have been active here. Racing season it starting up, and this site will see regular updates. Keep watching.

To start, this is a great video that explains how I grew up. At one point in my life, my Mother, both of her sisters, one of her sister’s boyfriends, my younger cousin, my wife, and my oldest daughter were all autocrossers. Each Sunday my grandparents came out to the events and watched, and mostly visited with all of the family in one place, since all of the spouses and kids also came to the events. This was a great time in my life. This video, captures that feeling. This is not my family, but it captures the same feeling, I wish that was something everyone involved in racing could experience.

Yes, I have promised to start writing again in the past, and I am going to do it again. Maybe I will actually keep my promise this time. Life for me has gone through many changes since I was getting 10-20 articles a month here, some for the better and some not so much for the better.

Ideas for articles are always floating around in my head. Some of the ideas are the best ever written, but they never seem to get flushed out of the cerebral spheres to the digital media. That is a pattern that has to change for the better. There is too much pent up frustration in keeping good articles about racing in my head.

Tonight, my favorite racing news show, Wind Tunnel had a special episode for the week of the NASCAR All-Star race. The Jarretts, Ned and Dale, were special guests. They had the usual questions about their careers, and Dale’s impending last race of his career. But the thing that got my attention was the comment about Ned’s broadcasting with ESPN. Dave Despain said that the years of Ned, Benny Parsons, and Bob Jenkins were thought by most of the hardcore racing fans to be the best broadcasts ever done for a race.

This comment made me start thinking. I had always felt that way, but why? In prior years there had been teams that were usually made up of an “expert” and a couple of professional broadcasters. What was better about Ned, Benny, and Bob? The thing I liked about it was the fact that they realized this was a “series”. Prior to the ESPN years of the ’80’s and ’90’s racing was occasionally covered on mixed in with figure skating on ABC’s Wide World or Sports. The sport had to be “sold” to fans of stick and ball sports. That meant that every race had to have a presentation of the art of drafting, the examination of pit crew members jobs, and more crashes in the tape delay post production than laps of good racing. Saying it simply, we were being treated as 5 year olds every race.

With the growth of cable TV in the early days, the creation of 24 hour sports networks, and dedicated sports fans all came together to make the most of a special opportunity. Racing was an easy fit in that many of the races could be cheaply covered, and sponsor opportunities were everywhere. The influx of money gave the production team the opportunities to develop new ideas with moving scoring, in-car cameras at all angles, and reporters that were participants in the race.

Soon rather than coverage of 3-5 races a year, we had coverage of every race, live flag to flag. Instead of targeting a baseball fan, that only knew how to put gas in his/her daily commuter, now the broadcast was aimed at people who watched from week to week. The fans now knew all of drivers, they knew how drafting worked at Daytona and Talladega, and they were tired of being treated like 5 year olds. The broadcast team now could target a true fan for a change. They could discuss one car being stronger in the middle of a turn, and another being better at corner entry. They could handle discussions of camber and caster angles at Charlotte being different than Pocono. The fans could be treated like RACING fans.

The other big factor was the fact that the costs involved with the coverage were still fairly low. There were relatively few commercials. We got to watch racing… not graphics shows, constant repeats of the “best parts”. It was just good simple racing coverage. Just what the doctor ordered.

Today, the broadcast seems to be aimed more at entertainment, which honestly the racing has been geared more in that direction as well. The graphics and cyber replays are nice, but the true fan would probably rather see the battle going on for 14th place than an analysis of if Dale Jr. moved down or Kyle Bush moved up. The true racing fan appreciates what the sponsors had given then free of charge (at least directly) but there are as many commercials in a hundred laps now as there were in the whole race back then.

Thanks for what you gave us Ned, Benny, and Bob. It was something we will never see again.

Most of you probably thought I had gone away and given up on this site. I have had a great many personal issues happening, in addition to a couple of months of unemployment and starting a new job, getting adjusted to various other aspects of life that have changed in my world. Add all of these corruptions of life and combine them with the racing off-season (except for the various Australian and New Zealand racing series) and the end result is that Racecarstuff.com has suffered. For anyone that reads this site, please tell everyone you know that it is back. I have some plans that will make it better than it was before — promise!!!

The one thing that doesn’t change for me is my love of racing, both from the grandstands and the drivers seat. So this past weekend I ran my first autocross event since the report I gave on the Joy Fund Autocross last year. If you want to see how the autocross went then check out the “Event Reports” section on Autocross.us and look for the reports on the TidewaterSportsCarClub.com (TSCC) event on February 18th 2007. You will see it started snowing during the event!!!!! I did not fair so well in the competition, as the car had a small coolant hose failure. It was fixed in time to drive the car home, but unfortunately the problem could not be solved in time to finish the remainder of my runs. In spite of that it felt GREAT to be back at any sort of motorsports event after the long downtime that life had imposed on me.

Oh yeah, this is a Daytona report. Well it is going to be a pretty thin report, but included will be a few of my observations.

The Daytona Prototype coupes are setting new standard still in sportscar endurance racing. After 24 hours the top two teams finished seconds apart. In the last hour or two the top three teams spent much time trading positions during pit stops often with the three teams running nose to tail. Similar levels of competition were seen in all of the other classes.

Scott Pruett is still proving that he is truly the best overall sportscar racer in the US. In my opinion there are only a few who can challenge him. One of which is beginning to show signs that his talents are beginning to be on the decline as he is counting the years, and the other is currently unemployed as a competitive driver. Those are Ron Fellows and Tommy Kendall. Maybe there is some bias on my part showing through, and I do think Boris Said on any given day can run with these guys, but he is focusing his efforts in another direction these days, trying to make another go at a NASCAR career.

And then the NASCAR part of Speedweeks was one of the most exciting ever. My personal Ford bias left me with high expectations. The results did not leave me disappointed surprisingly. In the recent years the Fords have not faired vary well at the Daytona 500. This year there was simple inexperience on the part of the part of Travis Kvapil that kept his Roush F150 from victory lane. That is not to take anything from the fantastic job by the winner, Jack Sprague and second place finisher, Johnny Benson who both edged out Travis in the last hundred feet or so.

Then there was the finish of the Daytona 500. Mark Martin is one of my favorites. With the laps winding down, it would have been a great thing to see him pull his Bobby Ginn owned Chevrolet (WHAT???) into victory lane. Mark lost the race because of his gentleman racing style. He should never complain about losing a race because of that, and he did not have any complaints after the race. He was disappointed, but took it in stride. In addition, the ending of the race ended in some controversy.

Ever since NASCAR started their policy of not racing back to the line when a caution flag came out, there have been controversial finishes. I have felt like they should modify the policy in some way for cautions on the last lap. I have always felt like the cars ahead of the accident should be allowed to race back to the finish line. Cars behind the accident should be told to hold their position. NASCAR can surely work within this ideal and come up with a workable set of guidelines that would retain safety and still give the exciting last lap finishes back to the fans that were commonplace before the current caution flag policy.

If it was by accident or by circumstances or whatever, this raced ended the way I have felt a race that had an accident on the last lap should have ended. NASCAR held off with the yellow flag until the race leaders had passed under the finish line. After the accident Kevin Harvick nudged his car ahead of Martin giving Harvick the win. As much as my heart was with Mark Martin, my ideals said that Harvick is the person who should have won that race.

More to come next time.

I have been an SCCA member for more than 25 years. I think this little promotional video does a pretty good job of explaining it.

If you like that and want to get more of the SCCA life, be sure to watch the TV footage from this years SCCA Runoffs. All showings are on Speed Channel, check your local listings.

Being the racer, I cannot come to a father’s day without thinking about the Petty’s. I am a father of four kids. Two are my natural kids and two are step kids that I definitely consider mine. To people without kids, everyone tells you it changes you in ways you never understand before you are a parent.

I also have a father that I can’t begin to describe how great of a person he is. To appreciate this, you have to know my mother and me. Mom and I wanted to race more than anything. Dad somehow managed to live with and love us. Looking back, I sometimes wonder how. In addition my Dad had an awesome career. He was in the Coast Guard. It was his job to do everything possible to save the lives of people he didn’t know. Often the phone would ring at 4:00 AM and Dad would rush out to the station. Sometimes it was a woman upset because her husband was supposed to be back from his fishing trip several hours before. Dad would go out and search for them. Often the fishermen had just run out of gasoline and were trying to paddle the boat back. Other times they had struck something in the water, the boat had sunk and they were hanging on to a life preserver. Other times Dad had to later call the wife with they type of news nobody wants to hear. To say I considered Dad’s job important does not do it justice. My father is truly unbelievable person. If I ever achieve 1/4th of his importance, I will consider my life a success. So far I haven’t.

Which brings me to the Petty’s. I grew up rooting for David Pearson to out run that blue #43. Richard Petty was truly a legend in his own time. His nickname “The King” is well deserved. His son Kyle carried on the tradition. Kyle never achieved the success on the track The King did, but he did learn the ropes of running Petty Enterprises. Kyle built Petty Enterprises from a small family business into a multi-million dollar racing operation.

Kyle always seemed to be doing this with the intent of passing the reigns of Petty Enterprises to is son Adam. As all of you know, Adam was tragically killed in a practice accident at NHIS. Kyle, Richard, and the rest of the Petty family took time for grieveing, but very soon refocused all of the energy into the Victory Junction Camp.

I can’t imagine what Father’s day means to Kyle Petty.

This is the continuation of my series of articles about the early days of my family’s racing experience. Here are links to Part I and Part II.

In the last article, my parents and I had made some modifications to our car and my parents were getting to be in the ballpark. They had added a 4-bbl intake and carb, small diameter and wider rims, more sway bar, and a few other mods, still all total probably came to less than $300 including the tires.

Mom and Dad’s initial goal was a guy named Al Lowe who ran a 429 Torino Cobra. Al had done much to his car, and was pretty fast at the time. He wasn’t the fastest in the class, but he was close. The fastest two guys didn’t show up at all of the events. They were Barry Weurker and Stan Vann. Barry ran a 396SS Camaro. The Camaro was well set up with big wide rims, BFG Radial TA tires (the only wide radial available in a 60 or lower aspect ratio at the time, but way out of our budget). Barry was probably the fastest G/Stock car in the area. He was the Championship Points Series (CPS) winner from the year before. Then there was Stan in his gold Camaro. Stan’s Camaro had a stock 307 with the non-performance automatic. It also was ringing up some miles on the odometer at the time. Stan drove all the way up here from some place in North Carolina. It was hard for me to imagine traveling that far to an autocross. Because of the distance I guess, Stan didn’t make all of the events. Barry only came to the CPS events as I guess he has outgrown the basic week-to-week event. When these guys showed up, we counted on the best we could finish was 4th behind Barry, Stan, and Al. But we were determined not to let anyone else beat us.

The rest of the year pretty much ran to form like that. Mom and Dad were regularly placing just behind those people, but could pretty much count on beating everyone else. There were the occasional bad days and the occasional guy from out of town, but those were the exceptions.

That year there were some great places to autocross. The Ford Assembly Plant in Norfolk was a great place. It attracted a huge number of spectators, had a fence around the lot giving easy crowd control. The Mustang Club ran these events. We could always expect a big turnout of Mustangs at these events. Some were well set up, but none of them quite like the Shelby’s. Some events would have 6 or 7 Shelbys competing. The quickest was usually a guy named Lee Mathias in a ‘65 GT350 serial number SFM5s071. I had fallen in absolute love with this car and watching Lee drive it through the pylons. Lee is an incredible driver with more natural talent than just about anyone. But all of the guys running the Shelbys were very good. I wondered if it was just the cars making them look like good drivers, but I soon came to realize that they were all very good at what they did and just happened to appreciate how good of a car the Shelby’s were.

I looked closely at the Shelbys and then looked at my Mustang and started to notice all the obvious and subtle differences. Some of these things were just beyond my skills at the time. We were also finding that the convertible was not the best platform for much more in the way of modifications, at least with any sort of (low) budget in mind. So we just worked with what we had. We didn’t have the money for new springs, or the tools to put them in, so we tried some helper springs in the rear. The rear springs on the Mustang were sagging anyway and they needed to be lifted up some, so it couldn’t fail could it? Stiffer was better at this point.

From the helper spring experience, I learned much about handling. We added them to the rear and the car was now stiffer. I didn’t notice right away, but the car was now experiencing quite a lot of wheel spin coming of the corner. We didn’t have a limited slip of any kind in the car. But the body lean had been reduced significantly. Mom and Dad both said the car was now much more balanced in turns (meaning it didn’t understeer as much) but they would push the gas pedal coming out of the turn and all they’d get was wheelspin…. I thought we must be getting better horsepower now and spinning the tires. We tried various things to reduce wheelspin including extra weight in the trunk. It helped a little, but they didn’t seem faster. I was still not driving so I was trying to figure this out from watching.

Finally one day between runs I jacked up the back of the car and removed the helper springs. I think I did it because of them had gotten out of position. So I could quickly remove them both in a couple of minutes. I did this and it seemed like another car. The massive wheelspin went away. But interestingly enough the 3 months of so of Mom and Dad trying to feather the gas to eliminate wheelspin had made them both much better drivers. They probably gained 2 seconds each in that one-day and all of a sudden they were right in the hunt. I think this day became the first that they beat Al Lowe. Unfortunately shortly thereafter Al bought another car (a Pinto MPG) and started racing in a different class. Stan and Barry were still out of reach, but now when they didn’t show up, Mom and Dad were now the ones for everyone else to beat.

After the helper spring ordeal I decided to start really understanding suspensions. Prior to that everyone always needed stiffer springs, stiffer shocks, bigger sway bars, etc. So stiffer must always be better. Well, I found out on that one day otherwise. Now it was up to me to figure out why.

The work project that I thought was nearing its end, is going to take most of my time for a little while longer. Sorry, but here is an effort to catch up a little.

Radio Show Went Well
My appearance on the Octane Magazine radio show as part of Race Talk Live on the new local radio station 1490 AM “The Outlaw” which is putting a great deal of effort in local and national race promotion. Dan Hankin of Octane has promised that he will have show archives available online soon.

According to many people, Glenn Bunch and I did pretty good on the show. I know it seemed very short and both of us actually wanted to say more than we did, so at least there was no dead air.

Hamlin Wins First Pole
Denny Hamlin is sort of a local guy to me. He has raced at all of the local tracks in Virginia, and hails from nearby Chester, Virginia. He won one the Budwiser Shootout in his 6th start in a Nextel Cup Car. But he has finally won his first Busch Series pole for Saturday’s race at Texas, the O’reilly Auto Parts 300. Good luck in the race Denny.

My First HPDE Event Canceled
Well the event wasn’t canceled, but I could not go to the event, for the same reason I have not been posting as much as I wanted here. The Mazda Drivers Associates event at Virginia International Raceway event was held on March 25-26, while I worked the weekend at my “regular” job. More of you need to start reading my blogs and other web sites so I can do this instead for a living.

Well, I hope to catch back up with everyone very soon.

I am making an appearance tomorrow night on the radio. If you live in the Hampton Roads, VA area I will be on 1490AM from 6-7PM EDT on Tuesday April 4th. Tune it on your radio dial and listen. If you are elsewhere, you can listen online at http://www.1490theoutlaw.com/.

I have been told that the conversation will probably be mostly about our family Shelby, but that the conversation may wander into autocrossing, open tracking, SCCA road racing, RX7’s, teaching our kids how to race cars, or ????? So of any of those things interests you, it might be worth your time tuning in.

If you do listen, let me know what you think. I have been told that the radio shows are going to be archived so that they can be downloaded later. If you think about it, give me a call on the show and ask a question to make me not look so stupid.