Race Car Stuff

Well on 5/28/2006, there was the annual merging of the stars from all of the different racing series.

For the stars of the Indy Racing League, it was of course the Indy 500. The big story seemed to be Marco Andretti nearly winning the race and breaking the family “jinx” at the speedway. But there were stories that I liked much better. Yes Marco nearly won the race. But the proof that he is not his father and grandfather in a younger package is the fact that there were not cars scattered all over the finish line. Neither Mario nor Michael would have let any other car past them at that point. I think too many people told Marco that his goal this weekend was to gain respect among the other drivers. Marco will develop into a good driver, but there just are not modern open wheel racers like there were when Parnelli Jones, Dan Gurney and AJ Foyt were teaching Mario the way around the racetrack. What a shame.

The other thing that interested me about the race was the fact that Danica Patrick in my opinion drove a much better race than she had the year before. She didn’t have a dominant car, but drove well and qualified and finished better than the car should have.

Earlier on the same day, half way around the globe, the Formula One circus ran what most consider their most important race of the year, the Monaco Grand Prix. It is a totally different race than every other stop on the tour. The track is tight, with no room to pass. For some reason on the last lap of qualifying at the last tight turn on the course, Virage De La Rascasse, Michael Schumacher stopped partially blocking the exit of the turn. It will only ever be known to Michael as to if it was on purpose or as part of missing the turn and not wanting to crash the car. But he did slow the last hot lap of Fernando Alonzo. This would give the fastest lap to Michael. F1 organizers penalized Michael by making him start at the back of the pack. Remember the part about this being the toughest circuit on the tour to pass.

While Fernando had a very predictable race from the pole staying in first place except during pit stop rounds. All eyes were on Michael doing the impossible, passing car after car, both on the track and through pit strategy. Michael managed to get up to 5th position before the end of the race. There were also some other amazing passes, but Michael stole the show, and didn’t even earn a podium finish for it.

Then on to the NASCAR boys, where Kasey Kahne proved the people who have been making comparisons between him and Anna Kournakova, wrong again. Kasey has his third win of the season in convincing fashion. There was no real “story of the race”, but there are several sidebars. I am sure you have heard all of them elsewhere, but the one thing I really enjoyed was the credit given by Kasey to Bill Elliott for his success. He has been mentored along the way by “Awesome Bill” and did much of the foundation for the number 9 team. I am sure it was appreciated.

Everyone knows the interesting story of the Delorean Motor Company and John Z. Delorean. A successful auto exec with GM (mostly Pontiac). Running into the issues of dealing with corporate politics, lead to Delorean working towards his dream of building a car company producing a car carrying his name. There were constant articles in the magazines cheerleading the futuristic designs and features of the car (on paper anyway). Everyone was interested in the project in the 70’s and early 80’s. Many very smart and successful businessmen invested in what had to be a shaky business plan. It was part the enthusiasm for a new car company, and part the spirit and salesmanship of Delorean himself.

Every car enthusiast wanted the venture to be successful, even if they didn’t like the car or the man behind it. The enthusiast suffered so greatly during the 70’s, that this project was a way of establishing the automotive misery of the 70’s was truly over.

Well sometimes it takes more than people’s desires for business ventures to be successful. There just wasn’t a market for the car that would support the production numbers that the company needed to be profitable. Financial troubles followed and there was a big drug deal/scandal that put the final nail in to coffin of the car.

Unfortunately the car was still a leftover from the 70’s from a performance point of view. It just wasn’t fast enough for the true enthusiast. It wasn’t luxurious enough the luxo-box market, and it just didn’t fit what most of the public was buying. Since that time it has never really caught on with the collector market. The current values of the car have basically kept up with inflation, but have never really turned into big money cars at the big auctions. There is a core following of the cars, but generally they are bargains in the collector world.

Well when the company finally went into collections, Texan Stephen Wynne, managed to buy the factories leftover parts inventory and the rights to the Delorean name and logos. Now along with Naples, Florida enthusiast Tony Ierardi, has opened up a remanufacturing operation.

The Delorean Motor Company

They have a reasonable inventory of used Deloreans. They can take your Delorean that is in need of restoration and make it essentially a new car from the factory parts inventory, or they can build you an unused Delorean from the parts inventory of leftover parts purchased after the factory closed.

The cost of a “new” Delorean? A very reasonable $42,500. For a few dollars more they can upgrade the suspension, engine, and other features to the owners specifications:

Order your customized Delorean here

One can hope the supply of NOS parts lasts for a while. It is such an interesting concept. I know they really need a racing Delorean to sponsor at track events and SCCA Solo II events…. Hummmm..

In years past, this weekend in racing was often the most dramatic of the year. It is the weekend of Bump Day at Indianapolis plus the All-Star weekend for NASCAR. Often in the mix would be the Grand Prix of Monaco and it makes for the racing fan’s dream.

Well this year Monaco is running on Sunday May 28th, so it was out of the mix. Making up for it would be the Indy Pole Day qualifying, which has been postponed from the previous weekend because of rain the previous weekend. So the potential was there for us all to take a few millimeters off of our fingernails.

As far as Indy goes, there was a nice little rivalry between Penske Racing and Ganassi Racing for the pole position, but Sam Hornish got the pole with a speed of just a tick under 229 MPH. Nearly a full MPH back was the number two qualifier, Helio Castroneves and about .7 mph back again sits the defending champion, Dan Wheldon, filling the front row.

The bump day drama never materialized. Thiago Medeiros filled the field at a somewhat slow 215.729 MPH. Nobody else made an attempt. AJ Foyt had entered a car for Ryan Briscoe, who had a very good chance of doing much better than Medeiros speed, but Foyt withdrew the entry in what seemed to be respect for the effort put in by Medeiros’ PDM Racing team at putting a car in the race. It seemed that the Danica Mania frenzy seems to have subsided for the moment as Danica Patrick’s Rahal Racing entry just never got up to speed. But in all honesty it seemed to me that Danica put in a super human effort in qualifying, running the best times for the month in qualifying, securing the 10 spot in qualifying. Most people seem to think that if Danica had put this drive in last year’s car she would have easily had the pole position.

Saturday night’s Nextel All-Star race for the NASCAR Stock Cars turned into a crash fest taking out several of the contenders. Left was Jimmy Johnson pretty much unchallenged? Johnson was very strong, and may have won the race against all other competition, but it would have been nice to see him battle Kahne, Martin, Biffle, Kenseth, Stewart and the rest for the win. All of those contenders and others were taken out by accidents.

Jimmy won by a fairly large margin. It seems he likes the track (Lowes’ Motor Speedway) that carries his sponsors name is given the correct amount of significance. The Lowes’ Racing Team really steps up for races at Lowes’ Motor Speedway.

I long for 45 cars trying to make it into 33 spots at Indy, and the Petty, Allison finish of 1992 in The Winston, or even the spin of Darrell Waltrip by Rusty Wallace. Of course being the avid Bill Elliott fan that I am, I never give credibility to the 1987 finish of Dale Earnhardt blocking the much faster Elliott (Hey I own this site, if I want to let my Elliott-o-centric bias show through, I am allowed).

As my readers know, I haven’t made it to too many events this year. Well my Mother and myself made it out to a Tidewater Sports Car Club autocross today at the ACU-4 landing site in Virginia Beach, VA today. We took the tired old family Shelby GT350 for its last ton track tune up before we take it to the Shelby American Automobile Club national Convention (SAAC 31) at Virginia International Raceway in Danville, VA June 28th-July 2nd, 2006. The ACU-4 site is probably the best autocross site east of the Mississippi River. The word is getting around about the site and event turnouts have grown dramatically over the past year or two. They easily had 125 cars this event, and a fairly large number of no-shows.

The course deign was fantastic (click here to see the course) and the event organization is setting new standards every event.

Entrants of note today were the FTD run by Stan Vann. Stan runs an old outdated C/Modified Caldwell D9 Formula Ford. Stan’s driving is amazing. I personally have gotten slower as time has passed. I can in no way drive as well as I could when I was younger. Stan has steadily improved to where he is one of the best drivers I have seen.

Rod McGeorge entered his new, well developed ASP Z06 C6 Corvette. It is pretty amazing how truly fast these cars are. Rod is a top-notch driver on top of is game. Add to that mix the Z06 and with a high level of street prepared development and the results are an incredible mix.

I finished a…. lackluster 6th out of 9 in ESP (Results from the event). I can use my 5 year old tires, and ….. 38 year old car as an excuse (how’s that??? I didn’t think so). In reality, I finished poorly because I drove poorly, no other real excuse. I do have some parts that should make things a little better. Time to do some stuff to the car to have a little more fun….. and finish a little better.

Click on this picture for a link to some great photos from the event:

I really suggest checking out some of Dustin’s other photos. He is fairly new to taking pictures at autocrosses, but he really seems to have a natural knack for finding good images.

Ford is a big company that has many valuable assets. Some of those are the Ford manufacturing plants. The financial problems of Ford and all of the other American carmakers have been well publicized. In an effort to reduce the red ink Ford is closing several of their assembly plants across the country. One of which is the local F150 assembly plant here in Norfolk, VA. The Norfolk plant closing will directly eliminate about 2500 jobs, but more importantly the ripple effects through the community are immense.

Ford, as a company realizes it impact of these actions. They therefore feel the need to act responsible with their other assets. One of the most valuable things they own is the name of the much loved Mustang. Everyone was surprised by the love affair the cars and the name have generated with Americans since April 17th, 1964.

But Ford has recently done something that has the Mustang lovers in a frenzy. There are literally thousands of businesses that assist the public with their love affair of this wonderful car. Many of them describe their businesses by using the object of their affections as part of their business name.

Well some of these well-established businesses have recently received legal papers insisting that they quit using the Mustang name. Others that manufacture restoration parts for the 40+-year-old classics have been asked to quit producing the parts that carry the trademarks or name.

Here is one of the many articles on this subject Mustangs Plus vs. Ford

Of course this is going to impact many people trying to restore older Mustangs. Here are the personal experiences of an old friend of mine. Lee Mathias is such a Mustang lover that he bleeds Ford blue. Everything he owns has some sort of Mustang, Ford, or Shelby logo on it. He has in the past owned one of those businesses that specialize in Mustangs. He also happens to have the natural talent to get his thoughts into well-organized words (the envy of all bloggers).

With Lee’s permission, I have reproduced a recent post of his to the Shelby Mustang e-mail list for your reading.

This brings up something I ran into today. In the shop where I work we are building a 65 Shelby clone for a customer. It will be an exact replica with a few minor power and handling modifications. The customer had been told Shelby was cracking down on all the replica parts on the market. We called Branda to get the unique parts on the way and true enough some items were no longer available. The alternator pulley, steering wheel, CS tach and oil gauges, and a few other things were out of stock with no back orders. Some of the items they said were the last ones they had. I had heard Shelby was putting pressure on vendors to quit selling repo stuff. This was discussed on this site several months ago and the consensus was he could not stop the sale of repo parts that were not trademarked. Before you go saying it is not Shelby but his marketing arm, can the arm move without the knowledge of the man? We managed to find everything except the gauge and tach by calling around, but every body says the parts are getting hard to come by. What gives? This article on Ford getting after the vendors smacks of the same school of thought. Why do they care who makes the parts as long as they pay the liscensing agreement? We have learned to live with that. Why cripple or kill our hobby by making parts and info hard to get or a lot more expensive? I have been driving Mustangs since December of 1964 and they are part of my life. Do they seriously think I will go buy a new one because I cannot keep my old ones on the road? WRONG I used to want an 06, even salivated over the new GT 500 and tried to get one. Shelby was my hero before Chrysler discovered him. We raced Shelbys when they were cheap thrills, showed them to educate the public on what a great thing this man did for America and Ford in international competition. Now I am disgusted with all the Shelby cars out there that are just stripes and signatures. Ford dealers are getting really greedy over the new GT 500 and don’t want us to enjoy the old ones to the point where my wife’s new car will most likely not be a Ford. This is hard to say coming from a true blue oval fan. My son is building a 66 coupe to drive to high school. He wants to autocross and rump da thump at the fart pipe imports. I fear for what lies ahead for him if he decides to embrace old Mustangs. OUR FREEDOM TO DRIVE WHAT WE WANT AND BUILD WHAT WE WANT IS BEING TAKE AWAY…..WHO IS RESPONSIBLE AND WHY? SEE Y’ALL, Lee

I feel compelled to present the Ford side a little. Trademark laws have been enforced in strange ways over the years. I can understand Ford’s desire to protect the names that are their property. But I just wish that a mutually beneficial arrangement could be worked out. Lets face it, when a company is named Mustangs Plus or Mustang Farm and they pay for advertising, that is free advertising for Ford. For someone who sees a well-customized 2006 Mustang pictured in one of the ads for these companies, it gives them incentives to consider buying a new Mustang. The automotive aftermarket helps the manufacturers sell new cars, as well as parts and service for older Fords.

I am still having the opinion that all I want to buy are Fords. I can allow myself my infatuation with the Mazda RX7’s because of the business relationship between Mazda and Ford (My RX7 and Mustang are cousins). I still could not feel good about owning a Corvette, even if I do like the car itself.

What do you think?

For everyone who says you can’t relive the old days, this television commercial trys to recapture some of it.

Shelby Hertz GT video

For autocrossers in small cars, hauling around the things you need to autocross, or run track events is very cumbersome. The typical autocrosser had a set of track tires that may be street legal, but are not practical for any street use. The miles and heat cycles driven to events will dramatically shorten the life to the typical “R-compound” DOT tire. Especially when the event is 500 miles from home.

The usual solution is a small trailer just big enough to carry 4 tires, jack, lawn chairs, cooler, and a few tools. But the addition of the trailer hitch to the Miata, Mini, or Mustang just spoils the appearance of your daily driver. But that is part of what you give up to pursue the competition of an autocross or track event.

But someone has finally designed a trailer hitch with this in mind. Miniature Trailers has designed a totally hidden hitch for the new Mini Cooper.

Mini Cooper Trailer Hitch

They have done a really nice job of hiding the hitch, and have made available a wonderful trailer that is perfect for autocrossers. They have even color matched the trailers to the colors available for a Mini Cooper. I just hope they expand their products to cars that I own.

Danica Patrick has generated much press in her short IndyCar racing career. I have stood up for her in the face of much controversy. Many legitimate racers have said that she is a publicity hound and has done much to discredit the other racers. I have disagreed with that constantly, claiming that Danica has done what racers need to do the get sponsorship and secure the funding necessary to drive one of these money pits. That is accomplished by attracting attention to yourself and your racing. Exposure helps pay the way for a racer, through sponsors help.

But something about the fact that she is releasing an autobiography, timed to release during the hooplah around the Indy 500. I can’t put my finger on why I think this crosses the line, but her posing for swimsuit photos does not. I see a huge differance. There is a problem I see with releasing the book after a career that is barely out of the rookie season. I can’t imagine her career would be interesting reading as her career is barely off the ground. Al Unser Sr. maybe Al Unser Jr. in an autobiography might be of some interst, but she has what 18 races under her belt? With a best finish of 4th place in the 2005 Indy 500? This can be an interesting read?

I don’t know, and I am still going to pull for her to get her first win. I also hope she has a long and glorious career, but the idea of an autobiography after just getting the career started still bothers me.