I've come up to a bit of a milestone with my race car and it has caused me to look back a bit. Back in the spring of 1991, I was in my last semester at school and doing the interview thing. That went well enough that I got a letter in the mail from NASA that said if I successfully graduated at the end of the semester, they would give me a job down at JSC. Back then, that piece of paper was sufficient for me to walk into a Ford dealership and drive back to school in a brand new 5.0 Mustang. I didn't even have to start paying for it until after I had received a couple of paychecks at my new job.
After graduating, I started autocrossing my new toy quite a bit. I proved to be not so good at this until the local hot shoe, Chris Marvel, drove my car with me in the passenger seat to show me how to do it. That scared the crap out of me but I was pretty hooked.
Things changed again in April of 1993 when I saw a flyer from the Heart of Texas Mustang Club. They were doing a track day at Texas World Speedway. This event did the oval on Saturday morning and the 1.8 road course in the afternoon. This being way more fun than autocrossing, I went about seeking other events on the big track. Back then, the Porsche club sometimes did single day events where the track was open for anyone all day except for the time you had to spend corner working. Some of these events were canceled because they didn't get the required 30 or so people needed to break even on the cost of the event. A few years later they had switched to the two day multi session format with instruction that is now common. They also regularly had a significant waiting list.
Chris and I started sharing my car at track events and we really started to develop the car. This was before you had the option of complete suspension systems from several different vendors. At one of these events, Chris Marvel pulled me in to instruct when they were running short. My first student was Joe Johnson in his then new Cobra R. I started instructing for a few other groups that had sprung up to fill the demand. I settled in with The Driver’s Edge and ended up doing all of their events for quite a while.
At some point, NASA came to town but they started out very slowly. After a while it had gathered a bit of steam and I figured out my now caged track beast fit very nicely into the American Iron class. Before I could prepare my full safety setup, Mike Bell became the first to run an AI car in Texas. At the next NASA event in the fall of 2003, John George and I joined Mike. I got my first race win in the third race of that weekend. Lots of work from several people in the off season and the 2004 season started off with both the AI and CMC classes ballooning pretty quickly. I finished 3rd that season and 2nd in the following season. In the off season before 2006, I found out that I was going to be a father. In order to keep racing, I pulled in Chris Marvel to form a team with me. We often times weren't the fastest out there but kept pushing hard through all sorts of hardships, including two blown engines, to finish the season, on a borrowed motor, 20 points up on second place. It was pretty spectacular but we were both spent and took a break from racing. We continued to do some open track stuff but at a reduced pace.
In the past few years I have been slowly picking up more events with an emphasis on adding to the list of tracks I've driven. I've now gotten to twelve different tracks with the breakdown looking something like this:
TWS 52
Hallett 7
Heartland Park 1
Cresson 21
TMS 1
MSRH 11
No Problem 1
Harris Hill 1
GSS 1
Eagles Canyon 1
NOLA 1
COTA 1
A quick bit of addition shows 99 events that I have taken my now battered and bruised Mustang to. I have also been to many events without my Mustang as an instructor, crew, or just to hang out and drink other people’s beer. Strangely, my car has even been to events without me. One in particular had Chris take Dan Allford to Cresson for an event when I was busy with kid stuff. Dan was impressed enough with the car that I got call from them on their way home requesting that I find a built car to purchase. I found Dan a fourth gen Camaro out of California and told him to paint it orange.
Anyway, it seems appropriate that the next event for my car should be a bit more than normal. My favorite track is Hallett so that seems a good place to start. Open track time or time trial don’t seem significant enough. I guess that means that the 100th track event for the Mustang I bought new will see me return to racing at my favorite track of Hallett with NASA next weekend.
There are lots of other numbers that could go with all this. I don’t have any good way to calculate the number of laps run, gallons of gas consumed, or the number of worn out tires and brake pads. I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know the amount of money spent. I did do the math on miles traveled and figured out my trip to Hallett will put me over 20,000 miles just getting my car to and from events.
There has been a lot to do to get ready to race again. I renewed my membership, medical, racing license, and even got a fresh dyno check (definitely no ballast needed). I’ve gotten fresh safety equipment and obtained the safety stuff that wasn't required the last time I raced. Thanks to Dan Allford and Arc Specialties for prodding me back into this and helping me get set up. The event is coming up soon so I guess I should finish putting the car back together...
Richard P.
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Originally Posted by michaelmosty
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