Race Car Stuff

Good question. I don’t really know sometimes. I am a professional computer geek that every day hopes that I will never have to sit in front of a computer screen again. But what do I do? Start a blog so I can spend more time in front of one. Go figure. But this isn’t so bad really.

What I have always wanted to do is race cars, play with cars, tune cars, look at cars, clean cars, work on cars, and …. well you get the idea. I owned a couple of cars before I was old enough to drive. I had a friend that he and I would drive old clapped out junkers around on his parent’s hundred or so acre woods. We went through the usual mini-bike and dirt bike stage, but the cars are what we enjoyed the most. As I got older my parents were involved in autocrossing and road racing, so I naturally followed the family tradition. Racing is what I lived for. Everything else was not as important it seemed. I did everything I could to know more about racing. Every new driver into a professional series, I wanted to know where they came from, to see if somehow I could duplicate their path to success. I knew how to design, build, and tune suspensions. I went to every pro race and looked at as many details of every car as I could while they were disassembled in the pits. I managed to work on a couple of professional teams as crew members.

During this time crewing I watched professionals. I realized that most of them were just rich guy hobbyists. The ones that were the true pros were just talented beyond belief. Each of the true pros had always gotten to a point where they risked everything they had on their future. I also realized that others did the same thing, and missed. Usually the failure was not lack of talent, but rather just circumstances, luck, and other things not related to driving ability.

I drove in autocrosses, road races, some oval track stuff, and basically whatever I could get involved in. My Mother and I shared an old school SCCA race car for many years, racing ith whenever we could manage the budget. Between races we autocrossed, raced karts, whatever was available.

Along this time it became apparent that to make it I had to take a huge risk. I chose not to take the risk. Instead racing would be my lifelong hobby. I had seen many of the professional racers. Most of them were not happy people. Somewhere along the line they had lost interest in the true artform that racing is. I didn’t want to become like this, so I sought a different direction. I would find a way to stay involved enough that I could enjoy it forever, without it consuming me. That has since been my goal. Today a lap around the race track seems to take much longer, but it is still just as enjoyable.

Since that decision, normal life with wife, family, house, bills, responsibilities, etc. has taken over. But there are still track days, autocrosses, race spectating, etc. These keep me involved without the total consumption I once felt. I am still the computer geek that has to sit in front of the monitor, but the days at the track make it worthwile.

I have now been racing one way or another for over 30 years, and most of my life before that was either watching on TV, racing hot wheels, or going to an autocross, but life is more rounded, and that is good….. I think…. At least that is what all of the members of my family tell me.