THE INTREPID “STALLS”

A continuation of an abridged series about Riley Technologies’ Bob Riley.

So much did Tommy Kendall’s all-but-catastrophic misfortune overshadow the 1991 Watkins Glen Camel Continental GTP race that few remember Juan (please don’t call me “Manuel”) Fangio II and his No. 99 Dan Gurney All American Racing Eagle Toyota HF-90 scored the team’s first win of the 1991 season.

(NOTE: Starting a roll that would lead to three total wins - two with a brand-new Eagle Mk III - in 1991’s final five races. Fangio and teammate P.J. Jones over the following two seasons would, some insist, change the very face of prototype sportscar racing by winning 70-percent of 1992’s and 91-percent of 1993’s prototype races. In 1992, Fangio, assisted by Kenny Acheson and Andy Wallace at Daytona and Wallace, only, at Sebring, which the pair won, took first place in seven races while P.J. Jones won three. Interestingly, AAR’s stunning win run was interrupted only by its “no-show” at the 1993 Elkhart Lake race.)

“I was sick; just sick,” Bob Riley said, recalling the rush of feelings in the aftermath of Kendall’s Watkins Glen wreck.

“Race car drivers are paid to take risks and every one of them understand they regularly face risks that can negatively impact them and can come unexpectedly, even be caused by someone else.”

“Anyone involved in motorsports, I don’t care where it is – Karting, Grand-Am , open wheel, wherever – understands there are inherent risks in the sport.

“Yet, motorsports, back then and more so today, is safer per-mile traveled than on public roads.

“No one in racing wants to see others get hurt, so we try as hard as we can to minimize the risks, but you just can’t get rid of ‘em.

“Look at history and you’ll see trial and error is the single most-successful method of human discovery. We learn from mistakes more than through any other method.

“Even with today’s CFD (computational fluid dynamics) the bottom line is that humans write the programs that the computers use to figure out what a car might do in a given set of circumstances. Humans – at least insofar as I know – haven’t yet figured out how to figure out everything there is to know.

“Shoot, back then, computer time for anything, much less CFD, wasn’t near as available as it is today – we’ve even got a CFD-dedicated computer here now at Riley Technologies – but even today you just can’t walk over to your nearest supercomputer and use it like you can an ATM, even though today’s everyday computers probably have more computing power than the supercomputers back then. The numbers still just take a really long time to crunch.”

“Even though I’ve always tried my best to make every car as safe as possible - because it’s never fun or easy seeing something like what happened to Tommy – it can happen to anyone,” Riley said.

“Still, interest in the Intrepid pretty well just dried up overnight after his crash,” Riley said.

The Bad At The Glen notwithstanding, by many standards the Intrepid was doing things other cars weren’t and had done so in rather spectacular fashion, to boot.

Although Miller Racing was absent in two of the 1991 season’s 14 prototype races and that Kendall started (counting only his No. 65 Intrepid) only but four of Taylor’s 12 races, outside of Taylor’s New Orleans win the team combined to additionally put their two Riley designed Chevrolet-powered RM-1 Intrepids on eight race front rows, of which six were poles (Taylor, 4; Kendall, 2); scored the fastest lap in seven races (Taylor, 5; Kendall 2); and, stepped onto four race podiums (Taylor, 3; Kendall 1).

At the end of 1991 Taylor and his No. 64 Chevrolet Intrepid alone finished with a fourth-place or better in 75 percent of the races in which they competed.

Whether the drivers or the prototypes in which they competed, by 1991’s end the Intrepid RM-1 and its pilots had faced the winning likes of Bob Wollek and Louis “John Winter” Krages in Joest 962C Porsches; Juan Fangio II and Rocky Moran in two models of Dan Gurney’s AAR Eagle Toyotas (that at season’s end had begun a 17-race, multiple-season win run); Davy Jones and Raul Boesel running three distinct TWR Jaguar models; as well as at least three different Nissan prototype chassis driven at different times by Bob Earl, Chip Robinson and Geoff Brabham, the latter capping 1991 with a fourth-consecutive prototype driving championship.

Having recorded three poles, three fastest race laps on his way to five wins, Tom Walkinshaw Racing’s Jones and his XJR rides were the best of the rest insofar as “wins” were concerned but still fell short of winning the season-long championship fight ultimately claimed by Nissan’s Brabham, winner of one 1991 race (Sebring) and “Mr. Consistent” in the remainder.

When measured against the extent of the financial, engineering and manpower depth available to that day’s top factory efforts, Jim Miller, Riley and Gary Pratt’s comparatively underfunded Intrepid design more than held its own.

Yet, despite the car’s clear promise, with 1992 on their mind, Miller Racing would whittle itself from two standout drivers to one – and it’d go with Kendall.

“I’d developed the car, won poles, led laps, won a race and there I was, out of a job,” Taylor said. “I just didn’t understand it.

“That was the beginning of me trying to figure out where I was going to go with my racing career and the manner I’d undertake it.”

Though Taylor would again give the Intrepid another go – with Tom Milner managing a couple of “borrowed” Intrepids that Riley said “were returned in better shape than when Wayne got them” – the Intrepid’s spectacular underdog moment had largely passed.

As prototype racing budgets grew well beyond what privateers could afford – at least those desiring and having a realistic chance at winning – and largely caused “the little guy’s” withdrawal, competition rules changes for 1994 were already in the air and would bring some back, along with again pairing Taylor with Bob and Bill Riley.

Next: the Mk III

Later (and enjoy the weekend),

DC

THE WALL COMES TUMBLING DOWN

 

Between flights and ready for work on the next piece in an abridged look at one of modern sports car racing’s most prolific designers, Bob Riley of Riley Technologies, this’ll perhaps occupy the reader’s time for awhile.

New Orleans Grand Prix du Mardi Gras winner Wayne Taylor and his Jim Miller-owned, Gary Pratt-built, Bob Riley designed and Chevrolet-powered No. 64 Intrepid RM-1 had just produced the 1991 IMSA GTP season’s slowest average race speed at 60.126 mph (96.763 kph).

But, bottom line, everyone else failed to drive faster.

“A win is kind of a funny thing,” Riley said. “It’s a validation of what you work for and a thrill, of course, but it’s also an albatross because one win soon isn’t worth much unless you can do it again and again. The thrill of a win really doesn’t last as long as it should, it seems.”

The schedule’s next stop, Watkins Glen International, typically produced lap speeds about twice that recorded in 1991 at New Orleans, evidenced by 1990 Camel Continental winners Chip Robinson and Bob Earl’s Nissan NPT-90 averaging 114.995 mph (185.067 kph) on the 3.377-mile (5.4-km) course.

Reigning three-time GTP champ and Nissan driver Geoff Brabham arrived for the June 30, 1991 Watkins Glen hunting an unprecedented fourth GTP driving crown but was embroiled in a pitched championship battle with Nissan No. 84 NPT-90 teammate Chip Robinson.

Principal Jaguar adversary Davy Jones (Raul Boesel, his teammate) had thus far won four races to Brabham’s one, but two relatively poor finishes – a 30th in Daytona and 12th in Miami – had dealt Jones too great of a blow to overcome Brabham’s steady, if not relatively boring, race-finish pace.

Through nine of 1991 season’s 14 GTP races and heading into The Glen 500 km race, Jones’ 8.2 average finish was nearly double that of Brabham and Robinson’s 4.2.

If Brabham were to assure his claim to that fourth-straight driving title, he’d need to at least maintain if not pick up his pace, especially when racing fortunes are known to suddenly reverse with bottom-of-barrel race finishes often furnished by the hand of others (ask Sylvain Tremblay about his 2010 Mid-Ohio race).

Neither Kendall nor Taylor had a realistic chance of winning the ‘91 championship but they could have an impact as spoilers – and perhaps help sell some cars, too.

Independent car builders had already long been a mainstay of racing, whatever its nature, but it was about the time talk of the Intrepid arose when Riley and Miller began to understand they, too, could do what Gordon Spice had done.

“I know it’s a cliché but Jim (Miller) really could sell a refrigerator to an Eskimo,” Riley said. “Gary (Pratt) was, still is gifted with his ability to put stuff together. All I needed to do was my part,” Riley understated.

Racers being racers, each knows that in order to win and win big he or she need only acquire the newest, better mousetrap and, by most observations, the Intrepid was on its way to being exactly that.

It just needed to pass a high-speed test at the 1991 Camel Continental VIII.

The Intrepid’s first victory two weeks earlier at New Orleans – achieved from the fourth row by Taylor, who drove around a front-row Brabham – hadn’t negatively impacted Brabham’s championship-title hope, especially given Robinson’s 11th-place and Jones’ 13th-place finishes in that Grand Prix du Mardi Gras.

On the car-selling side, though, Taylor and his No. 64 Intrepid were able to showcase that which Riley’s mind conceived, Pratt built and Miller enabled.

As the radical Intrepid passed each race test – from natural terrain to temporary street circuits – also growing were the prospects of other teams fielding Intrepids in 1992. Passing another yet another test at The Glen almost assuredly would make such likely.

With over half its 2.45-mile (3.92 km) course comprised of three straights and 12 flowing curves that serve more to connect and maintain a general clockwise traffic pattern than otherwise impede speed, Watkins Glen International regularly produces among the fastest average lap times recorded on U.S. tracks.

As a driver turns from the front straight and exits through Turn 1, he begins a 3,200-ft. stretch of track after which undertaken is a petal-to-metal, gear-throwing climb from The Glen’s next-lowest elevation to its highest – roughly the equivalent of a 12-story building.

In 1991, at the end of that climb a GTP driver’s first stab of the brakes came for a looming Turn 5 (aka, ‘Outer Loop’) – into which the more talented and braver will brake late and deep, especially with overtaking on the mind.

In the race’s 61st lap and with all the viewing world – whether at the track or on TV – knowing Kendall was setting up the leading No. 83 Nissan for a pass, Brabham lead a fast-closing Kendall deep into the roughly 180-degree, swooping carnival-ride, right-hand turn when the No. 65 Intrepid’s rear suddenly and nervously shifted.

Kendall’s Intrepid, experiencing downforce loads estimated to be something just a tad shy of unbelievably immense suffered a catastrophic left-rear hub failure.

As the left rear wheel-well’s bodywork door peeled away, flitting in the air as if a loose-blown leaf, the wheel, at it’s hub, was rolling well clear of the car and anyone watching just had to figure, “This one’s gonna hurt,” only it was worse than would be imagined. Kendall’s No. 64 plowed deeply into an awaiting tire barrier and the nearly immovable blue-hued metal barrier beyond. (See it at YouTube.)

(Note: Some immediately tend to use or say “ARMCO” as a generic reference for a form of broad, horizontal steel fencing made by a variety of companies. Given that the ARMCO name is trademarked and this writer has yet to establish if the barrier really was that manufactured by ARMCO . . .)

When the tires, dust and car settled, it was clear Kendall’s Intrepid hit the perimeter barriers - all but precisely head-on.

Though the Intrepid had been built to the same safety standards as that which transformed the Porsche 956 into the Porsche 962 – for one, a driver’s feet had to be located behind an imaginary straight line extending through the car’s front wheel-hub centers – Kendall’s impact speed had been so great that the damning energy inevitably shot beyond even that point and into his legs.

“I looked at my legs and puked,” Kendall said afterward.

In a literally sickening blink of an eye, cemented were the paths Kendall, the RM-1 and even Taylor would abruptly take.

And, of course, we’ll take that up in the next posting.

Later,

DC

“QUENCHING A THIRST ON BOURBON”

Another entry in an abridged Bob Riley story - one of racing’s greatest. (Though having something to do with getting down in New Orleans, what part in the series might this be, and the number to come, is for more industrious and higher-math-capable souls to figure than me.)

Though losing the overall Lime Rock Park battle, its show that day catapulted the Intrepid to the forefront in the war for minds as more and more owners and drivers started wondering what great feats might be accomplished if only raced in an Intrepid.

The answer would soon come.

On the heels of Lime Rock Park’s Memorial Day race was the June 2, 1991 Nissan Grand Prix of Ohio.

As happened at Lime Rock Park, Tommy Kendall’s Miller Racing Intrepid set a record-setting pace on the 2.258-mile Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course – considered by many to be among the world’s most “technical” road courses – with teammate Wayne Taylor (second) and Davy Jones (third) following, each likewise posting times besting that of 1990 top qualifier, race winner and reigning IMSA GTP driving champion, Geoff Brabham.

Alternating for the season’s first part between a 1989-vintage XJR-10 and a 1990-built XJR-12, Jones’ XJR-16 – under the direction of TWR’s Tony Dowe (who most recently has toiled, and won, with team-owner Leighton Reese) – was markedly slower (in the world of stopwatches and fast cars) than the Intrepid pair.

Still, the starting order was reversed by race end as Jones lead Taylor and Kendall to the checkered flag, barely 2-tenths of one second ahead of Taylor’s No. 64 Intrepid, again the bridesmaid.

“External elements in racing as often as not dictate the race’s results,” Intrepid designer Bob Riley insisted. “A driver can cut nothing but perfect laps and a pit crew can have perfect pit stops – everything a team can control can be done perfectly – but still not win because of something having absolutely nothing to do with the team. Yet, a team must always perform at its absolute best just to have a chance at winning.”

In the next race two weeks later, at the 2-hour Nissan Grand Prix du Mardi Gras, it all came together.

Ironically, it would come together only after neither Kendall’s nor Taylor’s Intrepid qualified for New Orleans’ front row – the team’s only third such shutout since the car’s introduction at West Palm Beach.

Contributing to that irony, capturing the New Orleans pole was the Pontiac Spice SE90P driven by Spice Engineering factory shoe Perry McCarthy (with American Jim Adams co-driving), which additionally captured the race’s fastest lap before experiencing the unforgiving nature of a temporary course’s concrete barriers, that are to even slightly errant race cars what graters are to cheese.

Compiling a blazing 60.126-mph average speed, Taylor’s still deft ability to navigate city traffic carried the day on the 1.3-mile (2.09 km) New Orleans temporary street course.

“Few people seem to know or remember but New Orleans was my first win here in the United States, too. I tell you, I was just elated,” Taylor said. “I’d come so close so many times before. A huge weight was lifted from my shoulders.”

Riley would also find relief, too . . . sort of.

“It’s an indescribably wonderful feeling, seeing something like that happen, because even though you’ve had success before and given everything you possibly can to make the next best thing even better, in the back of your mind you keep thinking of how it might be done better. I tell you, though, that was a wonderful time – even though I was thinking in the back of my mind . . . and still am, with everything we’ve done or do.”

Soon, Watkins Glen’s blue-hued metal perimeter would make New Orleans’ concrete-lined avenues look like a SAFER barrier forerunner.

Later,

DC

ALL IN ALL, WE’RE ALL JUST BOLTS IN THE ARMCO

 

A continuation of an abridged series on master race-car designer Bob Riley . . .

 

With Wayne Taylor and the Intrepid’s second-place finish at the South Florida Fairgrounds safely entered into IMSA’s 1991 official record, the No. 64 Chevrolet Intrepid RM-1’s debut was successful by most anyone’s standards.

Save perhaps one: “The Other Guy.”

Tommy Kendall, driving Jim Miller Racing’s No. 65 MTI Vacations Spice SE90P Chevrolet at the Toyota Grand Prix of Palm Beach, put it on the pole and finished fourth – one lap down to reigning 1990 GTP driving champion Geoff Brabham’s soon-to-be replaced third-place Nissan NPT-90; and two laps ahead of fifth-place and an also on-the-way-out All American Racer No. 98 Eagle HF90 Toyota, driven by Rocky Moran.

Among those awaiting a new car, in this case an RM-1 Intrepid (chassis No. 002), Kendall drove a year-old Miller Racing Spice in the first four of the team’s scheduled 1991 races, faring well during that period by neither qualifying worse than ninth nor finishing lower than seventh.

Indeed, in the Apr. 7, 1991 Nissan Grand Prix of Miami race on the 1.873 mile (3.014 km) Miami Bicentennial Park temporary street course, Kendall’s No. 65 Spice salvaged Miller Racing’s team pride by posting a second-place finish after Taylor’s pole-winning No. 64 Intrepid fell to the waysidewith a broken halfshaft on Lap 84.

Taylor’s 16th-place Miami finish somewhat dulled the luster gained in its debut race, paddock talk turning to Nissan Performance Technology and Tom Walkinshaw Racing’s soon-to-appear newest iterations.

“There was a lot of talk over the new Nissan and Jaguars,” Bob Riley said.

“The cars they were running, the NPT-90 and XJR-10, were competitive in 1990 and again already in ’91. So, a lot of folks were wondering just what kind of car they’d be replacing them with. There was Dan Gurney’s new Eagle on the way, too.

“So, I guess it wasn’t too surprising that we already kinda slipped a little from the radar. We had a really good car, of course, but the others had a lot of recent history. As good as we’d already ran the Intrepid was an unknown quantity that others may have seen as just being lucky and it’s understandable that it’d take a win to make them really take notice.”

When IMSA’s ’91 road show arrived at Connecticut’s Lime Rock Park after the first six GTP rounds, Jaguar had taken three GTP races; Nissan, two; and Porsche one. The situation was ripe for a giant killer to emerge; all the better if “All American” (with no intended disrespect of Dan Gurney’s All American Racers).

To Taylor, Kendall’s first race in the No. 65 Chevrolet Intrepid RM-1 at the May 26, 1991 Toyota Truck Lime Rock Grand Prix would spell a first: signal the beginning of Taylor’s end at Miller Racing or, as Taylor conversely sees it today, the end of his beginning.

In the 1990 Lime Rock Park race, Taylor and then co-driver/owner Jim Miller finished second to Price Cobb and John Nielsen’s TWR Jaguar XJR-10 – a lap down – and a score ripe to be settled by Taylor and and the Miller Racing team.

“But my clutch exploded just as I went out to qualify so I didn’t get a time and was moved to the back of field for the start,” Taylor said of a race weekend that saw the Miller Racing teammates all but bookended the 18-car field after Kendall’s Intrepid captured the pole.

Remove Lime Rock Park’s 2,400-ft. (732 m) pit straight – the track’s longest straight line – from the track’s already fairly short overall length and a driver then each lap on-average encounters one turn roughly every 820-ft. (250 m). Remove the 1,200-foot (366 m) slightly bending “No-Name Straight” as well and the average turn-to-turn distance is reduced still another 200 ft.

To say “Lime Rock Park hit the Intrepid’s sweet spot” probably would qualify as an understatement of almost legendary proportion.

Everything in the Intrepid, from its normally aspirated Chevrolet 6-liter engine’s comparatively quicker low-end torque curve to the car’s aerodynamic efficiencies worked in symphonic-like harmony at Lime Rock Park – at which two very talented drivers would conduct their own style of music, if not by original intent.

“Jim Miller knew what each of us faced in the race so he got us together before the race, and said ‘We’re not going to take each other out. If someone gets in the position to overtake, let him go,’” Taylor said

Although previously having amassed something in the neighborhood of only one-hour’s practice time in the newest Intrepid before arriving at Lime Rock Park, Kendall scored the race pole after knocking nearly three seconds off the previous record set in 1990 by Drake Olson in the No. 98 All American Racers’ Eagle HF89 Toyota.

Up front for the start, Kendall was able to run unimpeded, made quick use of the Riley design on the venerable 1.54-mile (2.478-km) circuit’s layout and in the process pretty well stunned even veteran race observers.

On the way to Kendall nailing the Lime rock Park pole, many in the paddock thought the Chevrolet engine was putting out far more horsepower than the advertised 800, largely overlooking the aerodynamic efficiencies Riley had incorporated in the car’s design.

With what has since become characteristically associated with Riley, the Intrepid looked markedly different from what had become an aesthetic standard largely repeated in other prototype cars. Although many observers noted its ability to take turns better than competing makes, the look was thought to have little to do with that ability.

But that which the eye perceives, the mind believes and nature’s applicable rules often are at odds with each other.  

An Old Greek Guy named Archimedes – at a time when Greece was at the center of the civilized world, if not the universe – got the whole computational fluid dynamics (CFD) thing rolling a couple-thousand-years ago, but the ability to regularly utilize CFD by major car manufacturers, much less an independent-minded designer, wasn’t available until well after Riley crafted the RM-1 in his head.

“Honestly, we were a little stunned at what the Intrepid was doing,” Riley said.

“A big deal is usually made of qualifying but sometimes in racing everything just falls together just right and someone goes really fast. While we felt the Intrepid was fast and winning the pole reflected it, the race is what really counted, of course.”

“But I can remember looking at Jim (Miller) during the race and saying, ‘I think it must be making about twice the downforce we thought,’” Riley chuckled.

Loosed by the race’s green flag and the Intrepid’s Chevrolet engine singing its throaty tune as it climbed Lime Rock’s No-Name Straight again and again, Kendall overtook GTP Lights leader Parker Johnstone’s Comptech Acura Spice SE90P in just 11 laps, then followed with the fastest race circuit on Lap 29. Kendall caught, worked his way around and began lapping his GTP competitors on either side of those marks, shortly becoming the first of only three cars on the lead lap before being made aware of a need to take a little of the edge off his blistering pace.

From the same green flag’s first wave but at the other end of the race-start equation was Taylor. His forward vision obscured and motion obstructed by the 15 race cars lying ahead, Taylor nonetheless had also begun picking off his competitors and was through most of the field when Kendall appeared in Taylor’s rearview mirror.

“Just as had been agreed upon before the race and of which Jim (Miller) reminded over the radio, I let Tommy pass,” Taylor recently recounted.

Later, just a little beyond the race’s midpoint and in fourth place, but still lapped just as Miller had earlier directed and, according to the driver, absent of an explicit intention to do otherwise, Taylor’s No. 64 Intrepid suddenly appeared in Kendall’s rearview mirror.

With Kendall ahead nearly one full lap plus a race-car length or so, the two Intrepids ran multiple laps in nose-to-tail formation making mincemeat of the field when Kendall suddenly slid from the course at the exit of Big Bend (Turns 1 & 2).

“We were behind one of the Nissans – either (Chip) Robinson or (Geoff) Brabham, but I really don’t know who – who did a brake check,” Taylor recently recalled.

"I was right behind Tommy, I mean right on his tail, and I wasn't at all expecting a brake check. Suddenly, Tommy was on his brakes and I couldn't react to it quickly enough and tapped Tommy in the rear and that upset him enough to send him off."

Precariously perched at Big Bend’s exit, unable to rejoin, Kendall helplessly watched as his race-lead cushion quickly evaporated, passing into a deficit before corner workers, putting themselves in great jeopardy, came to his aid.

Having insufficient remaining time to counter all he’d lost, Kendall fought with sufficient spirit to come back enough to place fifth to Taylor’s fourth, both having completed 132 laps to Robinson’s winning 133, amassed in the No. 84 Nissan NPT-91.

"To this day they think I did that intentionally (sent Kendall off) even though I had done as we agreed earlier, letting him go by when he caught me. There would be no reason for me to let him go by (at that time) and then (later) intentionally hit him. Why would I do that?" a still baffled Taylor asked as ghosts from Lime Rock Park, past, still pointed fingers.

Next, “QUENCHING A THIRST ON BOURBON”

Later,

DC

Messrs. Miller, Riley and Taylor Join

 

Part Three of an abridged look at Riley Technologies’ Bob Riley.

MESSRS. MILLER, RILEY AND TAYLOR JOIN

Perhaps hard to imagine today, there was a time when Wayne Taylor (left, today) hardly mattered in the grand scheme of U.S. professional motorsports.

With Roush Protofab and Ford’s 1980’s domination of Trans-Am and IMSA GTO racing, Bob Riley and “brilliant” were frequently mentioned in the same breath by those of that period’s racing world.

At the same time but with somewhat less frequency, Taylor's name was just emerging from one of racing's faraway but notable corners, South Africa. Yet, it wouldn't be long before "Riley & Taylor" would be just about as synonymous as Proctor & Gamble, Pratt & Miller or Taylor and Burton - that is “Elizabeth and Richard” and, some might say, ending much the same way.

Driving a Ralt RT4 in a come-from-behind points surge that literally concluded the 1986 South African season's last-chance race at Kyalami in Cape Town, Taylor overtook a spinning Bernard Tilanus in the race’s waning lap to win the South African National Racing Championship.

With an eye firmly fixed on building his racing future into international recognition, Taylor in 1987 made a second trip in three years to France's Circuit de la Sarthe, joining fellow South African racing icon George Fouché and Austrian Franz Konrad in a Kremer Porsche 962 for the 1987 24 heures du Mans.

The three drivers would finish fourth overall and, combined with his previous 10th-place overall effort in the '85 Le Mans, Taylor in two attempts had managed to score two top-10s in a race characteristically known to whittle the race’s field with each passing hour.

Gaining the notice of Spice Engineering, it wasn't long before Taylor joined the English-based manufacturer's factory driving corps and, a couple of years later in 1989, was sent to the U.S. so as show the Americans how to really wheel a Spice.

With a SE89P-Pontiac "Firebird" GTP underfoot for that season's final three IMSA races, Taylor closed the stretch run with a pole in the season finalé at the Del Mar Fairgrounds north of San Diego, Calif. - a track he'd not even previously seen.

By besting the time of a second-fast and fellow Spice SE89P-Chevrolet driver Bob Earl, who finished the season 8th in 1989 IMSA GTP points and was on his way to a 1990 Electramotive Nissan ZX-T ride, Taylor's Del Mar qualifying performance caught the eye of Earl's co-driver and team owner, Jim Miller, who sought Taylor after the race.

"Jim Miller's car (Spice) was second to me in Del Mar (qualifying) and after the race he said 'We should talk,'" Taylor recently recalled.

"I told him I was literally on my way back to South Africa, that I'd already shipped all my personal effects back and that I had a plane to catch right after the race and that we'd have to talk another time. So off I went."

"We had no contact whatsoever until he called me in South Africa over Christmastime and said, 'Come race for me.' I landed on U.S. soil on January 20th, 1990," Taylor proudly said, adding the arrival would prove long lived.

Joining Miller Racing (aka, "MTI Racing") for the 1990 season and driving the No. 64 Spice SE89P-Chevrolet that Taylor bested a few months earlier at Del Mar, a lack of preparation time dissuaded the team from attempting that year's Rolex 24.

Paired as co-drivers for the remainder of the 1990 season, Taylor and Miller campaigned a car that often posted top-five qualifying times - Taylor scoring a pole at San Antonio - yet was vexed by a mixture of mechanical woes, accounting for eight of the team's DNFs that season.

When the mechanical ghosts and goblins were absent the Spice and its drivers often performed well, but not good enough to overcome the negatives, leading to 1990 GTP championship points finishes of 13th and 19th, respectively, for Taylor and Miller.

With Spice Engineering on the front-end of a multi-year, downward spiral caused mostly by a fast-changing rules landscape that ultimately led to its demise (but not before combining with Acura and Parker Johnstone to win the 1991, 1992 and 1993 GTP Lights championships), Miller looked to leave his Spice behind and start the 1991 season with a clean slate.
 

AN INTREPID ENDEAVOR

"I got a call to discuss the possibility of a new project so we decided to meet over coffee. Gary (Pratt), Jim (Miller) and I were sitting in a restaurant when Jim asked what we might be able to put together, so I sketched a design I'd been batting around for a few years," Riley said.

And there you have it, ladies and gentlemen; springing forth from a ubiquitous restaurant napkin was the birth of one of the 20th century's more iconic GTPs, the Intrepid RM-1 (left, with Tommy Kendall and Wayne Taylor, L-R).

"Then we talked about some figures and Jim said if Gary and I would take care of building the car, he'd take care of finding the sponsor," Riley said.

"We'd originally wanted to put a 1,000-horsepower Judd in but Jim walked into the shop one day and said, 'I've got a sponsor and they're funding two cars!'"

"The sponsor Jim brought in was Chevrolet and, of course, Chevrolet wasn't going to have anything but a Chevrolet in a car it sponsored, but by comparison it only made about 800 h.p."

Tommy Kendall, by then under contract to General Motors after piloting a Mazda RX-7 to the 1986, 1987 and 1988 IMSA GTU driving championships, came with the two-car Chevrolet deal.

With Miller again opting from the endurance races, the Rolex 24 serving as the season opener then as it does to this day, and inasmuch as Taylor helped develop and was most familiar with the Intrepid, Taylor wasn’t displaced in favor of Kendall, who got the team's existing Spice SE90P Chevrolet while awaiting a months-away second Intrepid.

Riley didn't fault Miller’s decision to forego the endurance races, which included Sebring.(interestingly, Road America’s long straights evidently later being “okay”).

"The Intrepid was designed for the short, bumpy tracks we had at that time," Riley said.

"Even though Daytona's got a reputation for a few bumps - something that is soon changing, I hear - back then it was still smoother than most other tracks we competed on. But the Intrepid just wasn't designed to go down long straights because there weren't many of those in the U.S., especially as compared to what they had in Europe.

"It wasn't designed to be an endurance car, either, so that meant races like Le Mans were out, too, and not only for the Mulsanne straight (Ligne Droite des Hunaudières)."

Producing downforce by the bushel, on long-enough straights the Intrepid and its 800-h.p. engine would meet an atmospheric wall so impossible to overcome that even sound barrier-breaker Chuck Yeager hisownself wouldn't have been able to push through it had he been at the car's controls.

Given sufficient straightaway length, the Intrepid's roughly 180 mph top-end speed was often 20 to 30 mph below that of competitors, which in top gear easily blew past, but which the Intrepid would soon handsomely reel in, braking deeply into following turns and easily throttling past as Riley's aerodynamic wizardry keep the car squarely on otherwise unseen railroad tracks.

With the longest races and straightaways all but completely ruled out and a time-shortened but successful Firebird International Raceway test completed, the Intrepid officially announced itself in the Mar. 3, 1991, Toyota Grand Prix of Palm Beach with an out-of-the-box, in-your-face debut.

The second venue of  that year's IMSA 1991 GTP schedule brought the debut of the brand-new but relatively unknown Chevrolet Intrepid RM-1, which Taylor promptly qualified sixth then continued to surprise the paddock still further with a second-place race finish after going toe-to-toe with the day's goliaths: just behind Davy Jones' first-place TWR XJR-10 and ahead of a third-place and reigning GTP points champ Geoff Brabham's Nissan NPT-90.

"Of course, a win would've made it all that much better," Riley said, "But never underestimate the fun to be had in watching jaws drop, too."

Evidently, enough did.

"Before the race we'd gotten a lot of attention from fans when we rolled it off the truck," Riley said, "But car owners started queuing up after the West Palm race. Right away there was a lot of interest in that car."

 Next: “All in All, We’re All Just Bolts in the Armco”

Later,

DC

PUTTING ON A PAIR OF CAPRIS

 

PART DUEX of an abridged look at Bob Riley’s contributions to sportscar racing . . .

 

Gaining Ford’s blessing for a full-on 1984 SCCA Budweiser Trans-Am Championship effort, “Roush Protofab” – the combined efforts of Jack Roush, Gary Pratt (now Pratt & Miller Engineering) and the late Charles Selix – fielded a Mercury Capri (aka, the Riley MkI chassis) which for most of that season was driven by Tom Gloy, Greg Pickett and Willy T. Ribbs.

(Note: Ribbs, qualified a DeAtley Motorsports Chevrolet Corvette as second fastest for 1984’s first race at Road Atlanta but did not start the race – wasn’t even an entrant for the next three Trans-Am races – but showed up as a Roush driver for Race 5. When it comes to Willy T, one can’t help but wonder “exactly what happened with all that?”)

In the first race of the 1984 season at Road Atlanta, the two Capris first appearance put on a decent show with Pickett starting ninth (finished 19) while Gloy started third (finished 25), the cars being respectively felled with overheating and gearbox problems.

As one can imagine when it comes to Roush’s mentality, with that race came an end to the relatively poor finishes.

Gaining momentum, the two Capri drivers then pulled top-5 finishes in the season’s second race (Gloy, third; Pickett, fifth) and swept the top-two spots (Pickett in first; Gloy, second) by only the season’s third race at Sears Point International Raceway (now Infineon Raceway or, alternately, O. Bruton Smith’s Left Coast Palace).

The 1984 Trans-Am paddock had no clue as to what thereafter awaited, but by the third race just about everyone wearing a bow tie or an Obwandiyag badge (the Pontiac “Chief”) could’ve saved effort, money and embarrassment by folding the tent and head home for the rest of the season. Indeed, even for approximately the next five seasons.

For that 1984 Roush opening-salvo season no more than four Roush Mercury Capris faced no fewer than 18 GM pony cars (at Texas’ Green Valley Raceway) and as many as 30 of ‘em (at Road America).

Logic tells one the competition’s sheer numbers should’ve more frequently ground down the Mercury Capris, but by ‘84’s end the combination of Riley’s chassis, Roush’s engines, talented drivers and able crews combined to that year collectively claim 11 wins (Pickett 5; Gloy 3; Ribbs 3); nine top-2 sweeps and 33 top-5 finishes.

With Bob Riley spearheading an adept engineering team – that grew to include others like present-day Grand-Am consultant Don Hayward – the Ford Mustang, Mercury Capri, Merkur XRT4i and Mercury Cougar – would flat-out dominate production-based SCCA and IMSA GTO sportscar racing unlike any other team or manufacturer before or since.

THE NEED OF FIRING ON ALL CYLINDERS

An important if not successful part of building the Ford SVO (Special Vehicle Operations) as successful long-term program was the preceding 1983 Team Zakspeed Roush Ford Mustang GTP team’s failures.

Built in Roush’s Lavonia, Mich., facilities, Bob Riley likewise toiled on the blazingly quick front-engined car that most often included Klaus Ludwig (15 races) and Bobby Rahal (7 races) in its driving pool, at times joined by Geoff Brabham, Bob Wollek, Tim Coconis and Tom Gloy.

“The Mustang GTP was fast – we set a fair share of qualifying and fast-lap records with them – but they sure did go through a lot of engines,” Riley said, referring to the GTP car’s Achilles Heel.

“(Zakspeed founder) Erich Zakowski came from European touring car racing and was accustomed to relatively short race distances.

“They brought over a 2.1 liter, 4-cylinder Ford motor they used there, put a turbocharger on it that developed ungodly pressure and it all combined to make for an engine that was fast but just didn’t have the endurance for races over here.”

“The Mustang GTP was a really cool car,” said present-day Grand-Am competition chief Mark Raffauf, who as an IMSA official watched the Mustang GTP finish only 20-percent of the races in which it competed.

“But it, especially at Daytona, tended to run out of engine long before it ran out of straightaway.”

The Mustang GTP’s first race and sole win, Ludwig and Coconis sharing the steering wheel, came during its on Aug. 21, 1983 debut race, a slightly shortened, wet (460 of 500 miles) Pabst 500 at Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wis.

“If it hadn’t been for the rainwater channeled into the engine compartment through the hood scoop, I doubt it would’ve finished even that race,” Riley said of a car whose aerodynamic efficiency was so great that the Mustang’s engine, turbocharger and gearbox lacked sufficient cooling, even with two radiators, because air resistance was so effectively channeled into a helpful tool.

“One of the problems with that engine wasn’t related as much to the engine itself as it was in keeping it cool,” Riley said.

“Blowing those engines got so bad that Mid-Ohio’s firemen, when they’d see me come in for a race, would shout, ‘Hey, did you bring The Torch with you!?’”

“Those motors weren’t built or rebuilt in the U.S. We sent ‘em back to Europe and the turnaround time was so tight that I believe they sometimes only cleaned the outside of the engines to make ‘em look pretty before sending ‘em back.”

“I suggested they put a Roush 8-cylinder in there but they (Ford Racing) were getting pretty short on the patience end. There was a lot of money going to something that wasn’t producing much return so it wasn’t really much of a surprise when they went to the rear-engined Probe.

“The way things were going Ford’s way in Trans-Am and GTO, for marketing reasons I think, Ford was more interested in connecting those cars to the public and the Probe eventually went away. But I wasn’t really involved in that project so it didn’t much matter to me.”

“(Zakspeed’s) Zakowski eventually gravitated toward Formula 1, where he really wanted to be anyway, and Jack (Roush) decided to go to NASCAR.”

Next: Mr. Riley, Meet Mr. Taylor 

Later,

DC

BRILLIANCE

Just in time for Turkey Day – in the Nov. 26 proclamation of which U.S. President No. 1 George Washington mentioned "God” in the first, second and third person no fewer than 13 times, by the way, but which did not become a true national holiday until Franklin Delano Roosevelt “assumed the position” (nice ring to it, huh?) in the 20th century – below comes the first installment of what went far beyond what this author thought it might be.

As Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás once noted and this person since took seriously, “history” is an important part of present life. (Um, no, Tom, “Santana” would be the guitar player.)

When this author got into researching the last four-or-so decades of a guy Grand-Am competition director Mark Raffauf (who was first lieutenant to John and Peggy Bishop and later solely oversaw that period of sportscar racing known as the sports’ “Golden Period”) once characterized as “the most brilliant, prolific sportscar designer of all time,” Bob Riley and his accomplishments shined even more so than even this ardent sportscar fan had known, especially when chronologically placed.

The first installment and those to come isn’t Riley’s complete biography, a true rendering of such being so great that it can only be told in a large book.

For now, enjoy the turkey, ham, roast , vegan dinner or a bit of the ol’ fish and chips (don’t worry, old chaps, most Americans don’t “get” Guy Fawkes Day, either) mixed with a little history in helping give thanks to those who came before.

 

MOORESVILLE, N.C. – Inasmuch as Bob Riley’s father specialized in quickly moving crude oil from wellhead to refinery – being basic to eventual facilitation of car movement – it seems only appropriate that Riley would later specialize in moving refined petroleum through quick cars.

Born in Texas and first schooled in southern Louisiana, Riley traveled widely with his father throughout the regional heart U.S. oil production, as an adult Riley since has continued his traveling ways enmeshed in motorsports, traveling the world in pursuit of building and running even faster cars before he most recently settled in Mooresville, N.C.

Riley can scarcely believe time has so swiftly passed in his four years there.

“It just doesn’t seem like we’ve been here that long,” the Riley Technologies patriarch said as he led a reporter through the company’s 46,000 sq. ft. inner sanctums.

Race-car designer, builder, constructor and chassis fine-tuner, Riley Technologies – to most just “Riley” – in 2006 departed its historic 19-year Indianapolis home (wherein Pratt & Whitney previously built World War II-era aircraft engines) and moved to its newer, custom-constructed Mooresville facility within which various shops have capabilities covering just about every aspect of race car design, fabrication, construction and repair.

“It’s a beautiful area,” Riley said of the relatively tranquil Mooresville area, located about 25-miles north of Charlotte.

A particular race form rarely mattering, many of those in need of a fast race car have long sought Riley, above with a Riley MkXI Grand-Am Daytona Prototype chassis, for outside-of-the-box engineering skills which have conceived a variety of winning prototypical solutions that recently even included a unique, stand-alone generator having nothing to do whatsoever with racing, except possibly that which involves the pursuit of energy’s better mousetrap.

Though Riley has met a wide range of unique engineering challenges over its many years, the company’s “first love” remains its primary focus: motorsports.

In a career that got its first big break when Riley answered a simple classified Car Craft magazine want-ad that would send him to Europe with the now legendary 1960’s Ford GT40 program, the “give-or-take” octogenarian has for decades since played an integral role in one race car running roughshod over another.

Nowadays, along with son Bill Riley – who Bob Riley himself characterized as “the best designer I’ve ever seen, and not just because he’s my son” – Riley Technologies is expert in race-car construction, race-team management and race-day engineering.

Making like a tire and rolling down the road, Bob and Bill Riley, respectively the company’s corporate director and president, have over the years stayed enmeshed in the automotive racing culture by moving with it, figuratively and physically.

The Charlotte area today is home to a bevy race teams, especially those in NASCAR’s Sprint Cup, Nationwide and Truck series, but also include those like 2010 Rolex 24 At Daytona winner Action Express Racing – accomplished in a “Riley,” of course – and a gaggle of support industries that have grown up around them.

“Before we even moved here we were doing chassis work for folks like Robert Yates and Richard Childress. It just seemed logical to move closer to what already was a good customer base,” was Bob Riley’s response when spied on an administrative hallway wall was a photograph one might consider out of character in a facility more often connected with sportscar racing than stock cars: Yates Racing’s No. 28 Havoline Ford at Infineon Raceway.

Proudly hanging but only to be seen by those who escape the entrance lobby’s guest seating are dozens of photographs that line the company’s first and second-floor administrative hallways and mark decades of accomplishment, each screaming thousands of words about Riley’s varied and successful racing history.

“Oh, we’ve had some failures, too,” Bob Riley chuckled.

THE FASTEST RILEY

Nearly each Riley Technologies’ hallway step yielded an image that helped encapsulate a phase in the Riley family’s nearly 50 years of professional labor around, atop, in and underneath race cars of all descriptions, including a Bonneville Salt Flats wheel-driven, flying-mile land speed record-chaser, Lessman Racing's Riley MkIV AA Streamliner.

Thus far falling just short of a record-setting (roughly) 460 mph top speed and a 420 mph average that would etch team-owner and driver put Ron Lessman among the Salt Flat’s speediest, the Riley designed AA Streamliner runs a compressed natural gas-fueled Ford V8 power plant.

“I believe Roger (Lessman) could get that record if he’d just use a RoushYates engine,” Riley insisted, ever a “Roush Man.”

MARK-ING TIME

Given the Rileys’ almost golden touch in race-car design one might fairly wonder just how many times they haven’t been successful, especially when considering the stunning numbers posted by Bob Riley’s most notable renderings, among which include various pole- and race-winning AJ Foyt Coyote Indy Cars and the MkI sports coupe chassis – the underpinnings for Jack Roush’s irrefutable “Monster of the Midway” – which dominated the Sports Car Club of America’s 1980’s Trans-Am decade.

“Well, it could be said that David Hobbs inspired that Trans-Am program,” Riley said,

“When he was awarded the 1983 Trans-Am championship trophy in Las Vegas he had some pretty uncomplimentary things to say about Ford.”

“A couple of us Ford guys were sitting at a table and about to fall asleep – you know how banquets are – when he (Hobbs), who drove a Chevrolet for DeAtley (Motorsports), just blistered Ford in his acceptance speech.

“So, we kind of looked at each other and it wasn’t long before (Ford Racing head) Michael Kranefuss secured the funding to put a competitive product on the track.”

Next: “Putting On A Pair of Capris”

For now, it’s time to start on the first of many turkey sandwiches, the likes of which no “sub” place will ever match.

Later,

DC

SEE YA, PAL

Jim Hunter, RIP

In one the modern world’s pains of reminding one as to the things they have missed, my cell phone’s unrelenting, generally disliked missed-call list displayed Herbert Ames’ name.

Herbert is a proud Palmetto State boy who years ago was introduced to me by another proud South Carolinian, NASCAR’s Jim Hunter.

Although the damnable cell phone’s ability to remind also included Ames’ voice-mail message, it was ignored in favor of immediately dialing his number.

“DC, Hunter’s visitors have been restricted to family. He’s only got days to live,” Ames said earlier this week, choking his emotions.

Though sad, the news that our friend, Jim Hunter, was about to cross into the great unknown wasn’t surprising.

It had started a year ago at this race weekend when Hunter, suddenly short of breath, sought help at Talladega Speedway’s infield medical center.

Soon, heads were spinning with the rapid pace undertaken to fight the cancer which had invaded his chest and neck. Bombarded by radiation, veins filled with drug concoctions that future doctors will surely think as primitive as bloodletting is thought today, every means available was deployed in the fight to rid Hunter of what he and I would come to simply refer to as “The Demon.”

Still, I was nonetheless accepting of almost anything but the inevitable word that my friend had reached the end of his fight because I didn’t really wish to be the one to further pass along word of his imminent demise.

”Hunter’s death only days away, hospital visits restrained,” were the words of a text message I soon sent.

My youngest daughter, Camille, is a wonderful golfer. Anyone who plays or who has attempted to play the game marvels at her grace, strength and accuracy on a golf course.

Hunter was one such soul.

If anyone could truly love something other than another human being, Jim Hunter loved golf. So much so, in fact, his chosen daily business footwear were de-cleated golf shoes.

The common, everyday golf shoe has a funky look that can be easily spotted at 100 yards by even the most detached non-golfer. Hunter didn’t care. In fact, he reveled in it.

As many hours walking on a variety of terrains had taught him, “They’re the most comfortable shoes I got,” Hunter would say.

His love of golf didn’t stop there.

Honestly, I don’t know why Hunter so loved the game, especially as cruel as it could be and as cruel as it’d become as Hunter’s aging body ever more restricted his ability to play the game, even long before The Demon struck.

At first I was wary of pairing Hunter and Camille on the golf course, or even in the same neighborhood, so deep was Camille’s dislike of cigarettes.

Headstrong on nearly everything for as long as I can remember, Camille saw every smoker as among the lowest, most vile humans to be found anywhere.

Jim Hunter’s infectious laugh, his zest for life and his love of golf soon changed her point of view and taught her a lesson to look within that soul for the good to be found, cigarettes or no.

It wasn’t long before the two started playing golf on a moment’s notice.

I don’t know exactly what Camille saw in Hunter, maybe he was the Grandfather Camille never really had, her maternal and paternal grandparents having all died while before she was really old enough to remember them.

Whatever, she ignored his smoking and before long the two would play pickup golf matches.

Not long afterward, Hunter bought a house next to LPGA International’s practice facilities, where after a long trip to a faraway track or a tough day at the office could be countered in a matter of a few minutes in the quiet that usually surrounds a golf course.

Before moving away to Louisville and an awaiting college golf scholarship, Camille practiced every day at LPGA International and like every other golfer itching to play the perfection gained through practice, Camille often headed out for nine or 18 holes after practicing. Hunter often went with her, too.

Camille and Hunter soon became regular golf buddies, so much so that I can remember once being a tad envious. I loved ‘em both; wanted to play golf with both of ‘em. But, in the end, after all is said and done, parents just want to see their kids happy and healthy.

By sheer coincidence the 2006 NCAA Division I Women’s National Championship was slated for LPGA International at the end of Camille’s freshman year.

Sure enough, when Camille and her Louisville teammates played their way into their first national championship, Hunter was there for Camille.

Cheering her on, Hunter carved at least a little time each day she played, walking with her as she finished her last round.

I think Camille was saddest this past week because she wasn’t alongside Hunter for his last round, the one in which The Demon finally prevailed.

But she had no clue.

Oh, for sure, Camille was aware of his fight. After all, the two frequently communicated. They last spoke just last week. But Hunter wouldn’t let on – a benefit of being hundreds of miles apart and using a telephone to convey glad tidings – which Hunter did until his very end.

That was Hunter, too. Yes, Hunter could be cross with others, as would a fellow even named Earnhardt learn many years before, but Hunter really had one of the best souls I’ve ever known. The man embraced everyone first.

With golf one has many chances to share much time, Hunter’s and my matches were filled with his wonderful insight and of stories about days long passed along with shared knowledge of present headlines.

Recollections of those, though, now are best left for another day.

Today, this father grieves for a daughter who for the first time in her life has been deeply touched by another human’s passing.

Today, now, this father grieves for himself, because he lost one helluva a friend and, perhaps, knowing his daughter’s age of innocence is now passing, washed away with her tears for Hunter . . . or, perhaps, oneself.

See ya, Pal.

DC

TESTING CONTINENTALS AT VIR

LEAPIN’ LIZARDS OVER HERE! AGAIN!

Flying Lizards’ Seth Neiman and crew were on hand for the Rolex Series’ Continental Tire test at VIRginia International Raceway Tuesday and Wednesday.

Well, Neiman and company were on the track and pit-side Tuesday, huddling in the garage Wednesday as an early morning fog slowly turned to mist and then to slight sprinkles which turned to rain by mid-morning.

Still, Neiman put in some serious time Tuesday on the 3.27-mile, 17-turn VIR road course, often emerging with a smile on his face as the Daytona Prototype became more familiar to him – posting admirable times, too.

Driving a Porsche Flat-Six Riley Daytona Prototype which took Brumos Racing’s David Donohue, Darren Law, Buddy Rice and Antonio Garcia to victory in the 2009 Rolex 24 At Daytona, some say Neiman has begun a familiarization process that’ll lead to his competing in the Jan. 29-30. season-opening endurance race.

For his part, Neiman says, “I’m just having some fun.”

Oh, those drivers!

BRUMOS CALLING

“To get a call from Hurley Haywood, asking if I’d consider driving for Brumos, almost bowled me over,” Andrew Davis, most recently of Stevenson Motorsports, said as he undertook a Tuesday afternoon stroll of the VIR paddock.

“How could someone not want the Brumos name on their racing résumé?”

Davis got the call after Haywood and Brumos Racing decided “to get closer to its roots and run a 911-based car for the 2011 Rolex Sports Car Series,” Haywood said when reached by telephone Tuesday because neither he nor the new Brumos car were on hand for the VIR test.

“We’ll start testing it as soon as we can get the car,” Haywood said. “Our first official test will be at Homestead-Miami Speedway (Dec. 1-2).”

Davis will be paired with Leh Keen, former co-driver of James Gue in Dempsey Racing’s No. 41 Mazda RX-8. The pair finished fifth in the year-end 2009 Rolex Series GT standings, 32 points out of first.

Keen captured the 2009 Rolex Series GT championship co-driving a Porsche GT3 with Dirk Werner, the team shortly thereafter splintering in the wake of Federal fraud allegations made against team principal Greg Loles.

“Plainly, I believe we’ve got the driver talent to do well in our return to GT,” Haywood said, noting the team is in the final stages of choosing the team manager.

“We’re looking to win races and a championship in our first year in GT and we’re carefully putting together the pieces that will facilitate that,” Haywood said.

Davis said he’s leaving the Stevenson team with mixed emotions, noting the friendships he’s forged with team members and, especially, that of Johnny Stevenson and Robin Liddell.

“I put Mr. Stevenson in the loop as soon as I got the call from Hurley,” Davis said, adding that Stevenson was supportive and understanding.

“I’ve gotten really close to Robin. We’re good friends and I’m going to miss not seeing him as often but going to Brumos is huge and it just wasn’t an opportunity to miss.”

IT’S A GAS FOR KAISER

Ross Kaiser, here as a result of the 2011 Sunoco Rolex 24 At Daytona Challenge, which put the driver into a Rolex 24 At Daytona competing Daytona Prototype as part of his British Radical championship winner’s package, was hard at work on the 3.27-mile VIR track acclimating himself to the No. 77 Doran Racing Ford Dallara.

Most folks on hand for the test thought VIR’s slightly overcast sky and 70-degree temperatures to be acceptably cool, whereas Kaiser compared it to a “hot, sunny day in England.”

Kaiser put in most of the Doran’s available seat time (though Brad Jaeger captured second – more on that later), settling into a 1:46 lap of the 17-turn, terrain-changing course by day’s end.

He was one tired British race car driver, too.

“This car’s a bit heavier and harder to turn than my Radical,” Kaiser said. “Also, I’m used to being in an open cockpit car and the air flow helps keep me cooler. I’m in need of some better airflow through my helmet.”

Already on the way by Tuesday afternoon was the means by which to provide such, though with Wednesday’s cooler-still temperatures and doubtful sight of the sun, extra cooling may not be necessary, just yet.

GAINING PERSPECTIVE

“I tell you, seeing a young mother and father put their faith and weeks-old baby in the hands of doctors for a heart operation kind of puts life into perspective,” Michael Gué said Tuesday.

The team manager of Dempsey Racing’s No. 41 Mazda RX-8, Gué and son James Gué, who also happens to drive that RX-8, had just returned from a visit to Seattle Children’s Hospital – for whom the team help raise funds – to witness the procedure as well as speak with all involved.

“The parents are usually first-time parents and to look into their eyes and simultaneously see hope and almost sheer desperation really strike at the heart,” Mike Gué said.

“The doctors are so incredibly professional that what they undertake seems almost routine, yet a little life hung precariously in the balance. It really was quite incredible.”

Nonetheless, racing helps pay the bills – for the Gué family as well as those Seattle Children’s Hospital babies – and attention inevitably returns to finding a compatible, competent driver to fill the RX-8 seat Leh Keen vacated.

“Fortunately, this year we’re not lacking for applicants,” Mike Gué said. “We’ve yet to work it down to a short list but we’ll start on that after this (VIR) test.”

The team likely isn’t hurting for candidates for a couple of reasons, among which would be a new team driver’s increased appeal among the fairer sex, albeit as a result of the appeal generated by yet another team driver and sometimes Hollywood star, Patrick Dempsey.

Imagine the pressure a potential driver recruit would get from his significant other to “sign now, dammit!” so that she and perhaps a cadre of her best girlfriends could possibly hang, even if but for a moment, with Dr. McDreamy. Heck, the economic benefits probably are good, too – one being able to sign a driver for less money just to regularly hang in the same driver’s lounge as Dempsey, certainly saving the team $20,000 or $30,000 worth of salary, don’t you think?

Perhaps more importantly, though admittedly a stretch by comparison, is the team’s demonstrated ability to win, as it did at the Crown Royal 200 at Watkins Glen International, or the ability to post an additional three 2010 podiums: a third at Homestead; second at Lime Rock Park; and, another third-place in the Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen.

Nah, surely such pales in comparison.

THE MEISTER, JAEGER

Brad Jaeger, who with Memo Gidley co-driving, had eight 2009 starts and 13 starts in 2008 in Doran’s No. 77 Ford Dallara, will apparently be seeing action in the No. 77 for the Jan 29-30 Rolex 24 At Daytona and the June 3-4 Sahlen’s Six hours of The Glen.

Jaeger was the car at the VIR test and was in the seat late Tuesday when the Doran crew alternately hung a couple of new Grand-endplate designs on the car.

“Nah, we won’t be able to tell any difference here,” team owner, manager, chief bottle washer and sometimes truck driver Kevin Doran said while the test was underway of the extra hoped-for downforce the plates might produce. “You’ll really not see much here because this really isn’t the best environment to actually measure whatever is produced. Grand-am asked us to put ‘em and we complied.”

Also complying with the endplate test was Michael Shank Racing’s No. 60 Crown Royal Special Reserve Ford Riley with Jon “Hairless” Pew at the wheel who insisted the most telling bottom-line result for him and the new endplates was his not wrecking the car.

Helping Pew were newly installed paddle shifters on the steering wheel centerline’s left and right horizontal sides.

“They’re nice, especially helpful when you formerly had to shift going into a corner,” Pew said.

Pew explained that a number of corners are encountered where one must shift a gear but the throw of which will result in net loss of time.

“There are some corners where you have to downshift earlier just so you have the right pull going through or coming out of a corner. With the paddle shifter, I can keep both hands on the wheel and shift at the optimum moment.

Plus, there’s the added advantage of preventing a mechanical over-rev, because the paddle’s electronics won’t activate the change unless the engine revs and selected gear are in an acceptable range.

“I like it. The paddle shifter’s a good idea that’ll ultimately save a team some money in the gearbox.”

And, maybe, time on the track.

“I just look at Scott Pruett and know if he can do it, that maybe there’s hope I can do it too,” Pew’s co-driver Ozz Negri said of his potential for driving when he’s 50-years old.

LET THE FORCE BE WITH YOU

Some people along VIR’s pit road suggest a certain U.S. Government-associated car manufacturer had taken the Federal Health Care (ObamaCare) methodology to heart, saying the carmaker’s racing arm issued an “or-else” ultimatum to a couple or three active and, now, possibly former series teams.

The unconfirmed story goes something like this: “You, Mr. Two-Car-Team-Owner, must rid yourself of one car – even though you’re making money with that gentleman driver in it, or we’ll cut off your funding for the one with the professionals in the car.”

“And you, you silly Mr. Other-Team-Owner, we don’t care that you overcame tremendous odds and performed admirably on what didn’t even come close to a shoestring budget, you must rid yourself of that car or we won’t be playing in your sandbox at all, either.”

Left confusing this poor old writer is that Mr. O-T-O then wouldn’t have a car, any car whatsoever needing funds of any sort if he doesn’t have a car to fund in the first place. Right?

Is this another case of how diabolical government minds function? Then again, maybe it’s another 2012 apocalypse warning sign? Perhaps both.

(Post Script: A GM Racing representative called this author Friday, Oct. 22, 2010, to convey that GM Racing wasn’t they who weren’t named above.)

I ONLY WANT TO DRIVE

Paul Edwards, with whom a reporter briefly crossed paths last Sunday in Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jones International Airport , (learned only today) was returning from a one-day familiarization of the Spirit of Daytona No. 90 Coyote-Chevrolet at south-Georgia’s Roebling Road.

Yes, it appears Buddy Rice is out of the No. 90 seat he shared with a continuing Antonio Garcia.

This is the time of the year when yours truly and his brethren must start putting two and two together so as to have any hope of totaling three inasmuch as no one is really saying much of anything for fear of anti free-marketers entering the picture and telling everyone they must purchase racing insurance.

Huh?

Yep.

By the way, Wayne Taylor Racing’s No. 10 SunTrust Dallara has traded its Ford for a Chevrolet, too.

DEUTSCHE TOURENWAGEN MASTERS

Talking about hot topics . . .

A certain longtime BMW-associated driver can’t wait for 2012 (yes, yes, but they’ll start testing in 2012) and another longtime BMW-associated driver can’t wait for 2012 (yes, yes, but they’ll start forming teams over here in 2012 – or 2010 if this guy has his way).

This is a deal which started brewing early in 2009 and one which has had more players, is slightly more involved and, perhaps, convoluted than appears at present.

But in revealing it in grand fashion is Grand-Am’s David Spitzer, who’s done a credible job of raising the ire of at least two of NASCAR’s highest-level but closed-mouth types and to which another high-level NASCAR type retorted . . . um, well, actually, it’d be best not to repeat it herein, what with family members of all ages tuning in.

But he retorted a good one. Um, supposedly, of course.

Lastly, does anyone perchance remember David Bowie’s “Young American? What about you, John?

Later,

DC

WALKING ABOUT CHARLOTTE

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (08 Oct., 2010) – What comes to mind when someone throws a “North Carolina” reference into a conversation? Tar heels? Tobacco Road? Southern Bells with Southern drawls? Basketball and Michael Jordan? NASCAR?

While undertaking a short 20-or-so-block downtown Charlotte walkabout, seen by your faithful scribe Friday was a cosmopolitan-looking, 40-ish business-type smartly dressed in clothes that weren’t even remotely close to everyday dollar-store closeouts and, perhaps more telling of Charlotte having become something other than what it was even just a couple-or-three decades ago, the dude was looking at the world through blue-colored compact glasses.

Then, there were the urban shoulder bags. Lots of ‘em. Not your momma’s shoulder bag, a.k.a. “purse,” mind you, because when in a male’s possession they’re variously named “messenger” or “laptop cases” or, perhaps, “satchel,” but they darn sure weren’t “urmamma’s” bag – though it’s reasonable to expect within many men’s bags today are found a tissue pack or two, some spare change and, maybe, a nail file or, given “male liberation,” a pacifier here and there (whether his or a child’s is a tossup, for sure).

Be assured of one thing: 30-years ago a male Southerner wouldn’t have been caught dead with something hanging from his shoulder, other than, say, a shirt, a golf bag, a holstered .45 or a plow horse’s reins.

But an influx of folks from faraway lands – which Charlotte and the surrounding area surely have experienced over the last three decades – brings different folks having different strokes.

Backpacks – by contrast assuredly in Charlotte’s downtown minority Friday – at least had a reasonable chance at acceptance when, after all, John Wayne wore ‘em, too.

Still, chalk up yet another computer-age change.

HALL MONITORING

The NASCAR Hall of Fame is the site of Saturday’s 2011 Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge Awards Banquet.

Also in Charlotte’s downtown, NASCAR’s HOF opened in May.

On the first floor of the three main floors within are the Belk High-Octane Theater – wherein the pretty trophy girls will strut Saturday evening – and an incrementally increasing “racing surface” named “Glory Road” – that starts from flat and runs to 33-degrees and upon which are a dozen or so cars made famous over the years by NASCAR’s drivers and “wrenches.”

Bobby Allison’s famed No. 22 Buick LeSabre/Regal is there too, with a glaring error that surprised this viewer. A usually fastidious museum historian, Buzz McKim, who has lived and breathed the tiniest of NASCAR history details for decades, appears to have missed.

Ranging from a Red Vogt-prepared, Red Byron-driven pre-World War II Ford Coupe, which won NASCAR’s first national championship in 1949, to Jimmie Johnson’s No. 48 Lowe’s Chevrolet (Car Of Tomorrow ver. 1.0), found between are famous NASCAR race cars of the equally famous drivers they carried. Dale Earnhardt’s No. 3 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet is there along with Bobby Isaac’s winged, 1970 championship-winning Dodge Daytona – a car that would also the same year set a number of still standing Bonneville Salt Flat records.

To this exhibit-wanderer, though, the real goodies were found on the Hall’s second and third floors.

The second floor contains a dedicated exhibit room for the Hall’s most recent inductees (soon to be replaced by the 2011 batch) and some objects – personal clothing, cars, trophies, rings, fishing gear and a conference table (Bill France Jr’s) – most associated with the first class of inductees.

With no intended disrespect shown toward the Hall’s first class, the third floor was this writer’s favorite.

Dedicated to both the famous and a little less famous – but every bit as important – members of NASCAR’s racing community since its founding, one exhibit is video roll call of well-known and not-as-well-known, but nonetheless significant, NASCAR “contributors” – from track owners to race officials, a few surprisingly young when they passed.

Also found on the third floor is found Jim France’s 1992 “Carmichael’s Downtown Daytona” drivers suit, in which he won the 1992 Legend’s National Championship, and ½ of a Union 76 Ball shell – this writer having spent the better part of the last century within a similar one (he knows it isn’t the same Ball, because his didn’t have a fire-sprinkler system).

The biggest glaring omission of all: not a single word about NASCAR’s Grand-Am community or championships! Surely such addition would bring at least a few folks down from VIRginia International Raceway (where a new DP endplate will be introduce later this month, Oct. 18-20).

The Belk High-Octane Theater offers plush, comfortable high-back rocking chair seating, and it will at the least provide a very comfortable place to watch the pretty trophy girls, listen to acceptance speeches, see tears, hear giddiness and those who’ll vow of “even better racing next year.”

Frankly, one wonders how the Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge can top its 2010 action.

Later,

DC

WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FRIENDS

 

Over the last day an avalanche of inquiries (thank you, Brad, you’re quite prolific), were fielded as to this author’s disposition, wondering if he’d “fallen off” Earth’s face (again, thank you, Brad) or, alternatively, expressing concern for Ol’ DC’s health (you’re a helluva guy, Brad).

The answers: “yes,” “no,” “maybe,” “yep,” “uh-huh,” “nuh-uh,” “you’re so funny,” “go suck an egg” and “You never call me anymore, Wayne” (not necessarily in order, respectively, to the above inquiries and, indeed, the answers may not have anything at all to do with any of the above).

FEELING ALRIGHT?

I’m Not Feeling Too Good Myself (thank you, Dave Mason)(uh, for the lyrics, man, not the “upset”)

Considering an ensuing reaction, longtime Grand-Am engine builder RoushYates Engines’ sports car program manager John Maddox was likely feeling a little shell shocked in the days and weeks after the company’s Aug. 6 announcement of its 2011 American Le Mans Series venture.

Misery loving company and all, Mason likely felt far better late last week when ALMS president Scott Atherton offered a “. . . traditional State of the Series address with an exciting crescendo announcement on Friday as he made public the plans for Riley Technologies to deliver an all-new design for the LMP2 category starting in 2011,” according to the series’ media department (an “exciting crescendo announcement?” Oh, well, I guess it’s kind of like “Mr. Whipple” – the Charmin-squeezing “grocer” most everyone disliked. Whether intended by the marketers, the advertisement made an indelible mark on those who repeatedly suffered through it).

Nevertheless, one easily read (rhymes with “red”) between the series’ lines, “. . . with the help, Atherton took sheer delight in sticking and twisting a couple of knives in former (1998-2000) employer International Speedway Corporation and, consequently, cousin-company NASCAR’s Grand-Am . . .”

An original Grand-Am constructor, Riley Technologies, a division of Sea Star Group, Inc., designed and built the Rolex Series’ dominant MkXI Daytona Prototype chassis – the winning numbers of which are unlikely to be broached anytime in the near or, perhaps, far future.

Playing in two especially acrimonious sandboxes will, at best, be politically difficult because principals in each series will at the least seek information concerning the other series. To deny such or even think otherwise goes against Human Operations Manual rule nos. 09 and 10.

Such a road – where one can be nailed coming and going – is fraught with awaiting “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” political landmines.

On one hand, RoushYates and Riley Technologies’ move is at least superficially understandable when seen through Mason’s eyes, who noted that keeping his RoushYates employees employed meant having to explore every available business opportunity.

The other side: unquestionable is that either entity would today exist absent a certain family’s early, frequent and timely efforts, whether beginning 8-years or 20-some-odd-years ago.

SHAFT, CAN YOU DIG IT? (thanks, Isaac Hayes; post Tina Turner)

RoushYates’ early August announcement admittedly left this writer confused; last weekend’s Riley announcement positively, assuredly dumbfounding.

This author and a near-lifelong buddy – a well-respected jurist clearly possessing a professional and personal stature well beyond my own – as youths at times became so agitated with the other that blows were exchanged more than once.

Still another friend has in recent years repeatedly reached deep to provide this too-often grating, sometimes bumbling fellow a reason to press on in life – despite needing to at times seriously chew on this writer’s posterior.

This fortunate soul and his spouse have been married since 1979. Over that time we’ve had our fair share of disagreements and faced relatively difficult times. Indeed, probably like others, our union today is under one of its greatest strains, given her nearly nonexistent income production and the resultant trial by fire.

(By the way, the “little woman” is one of those “greedy corporate” types, a business-owner who for at least two years has taken all but no pay so that loyal employees may continue to bank paychecks. Not alone, there are many others personally known to this writer doing the same.)

For the sake of debate: would not bigamy or divorce – for whatever reason – conceptually be the same as joining with a detractor who has all but sworn the destruction of that which brung one to the dance?

Even though time and again we – that is, all of the above – have respectively been driven to the abyss by the other, never has the point been reached of casually dismissing as inconsequential that which brought us to the present, deciding as “unimportant” the very considerable contributions made to the other.

Besides, my Momma never promised me a rose garden.

Later,

DC