Category: Racing

I found this today while looking for something else entirely. Oh, to be a racer in the Kelly Girl (later, of course, just “Kelly American”) Challenge! Racing against famous and soon-to-be-famous people! Driving 1976 Cutlasses and whatnot! Would people come to see races today with nothing but Honda CR-Vs and the like? These were not particularly rapid events; the one year of results I could find for Mid-Ohio the pole position time was 1:59. My Neon will run a 1:43 on that same track, and my Accord will run a 1:37. But everything’s relative, of course, and I think it would have been great to see these big coupes (and, apparently, the occasional Granada sedan) bash it out.

The spectator stands would fill up for these races pretty quickly. They’d be empty today, of course. Quite a few people have decided they’d rather go iRacing on their home computers than watch someone else compete for real. I can’t argue with this viewpoint, but I’d also like to step into a time machine for just one summer weekend in 1980 or thereabouts. Nothing to do, no screens to contemplate, and a genuine showroom-stock race going on just an hour’s drive away. Here come the Kelly Girl racers!

From the talented driver/creative Michael Maduske comes “Homeslice: A 3-Sided Story”.

Click the jump for Mr. Bryant’s response.

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If you read this blog often enough — and I hope you do, we’re clocking along at very close to that sacred break-even point where the fiscal rewards for my online babbling precisely match the sunk costs of making said babbling available — then you know that all, or at least many, roads lead to The Last Psychiatrist and his recurring focus on narcissism as our modern disease. Periodically, we will have a smarter-than-thou reader who will cast a weary, jaded eye upon all that is discussed here and airily condemn it with some variant of “Yeah, yeah, whatever, people have always been narcissists, there’s nothing new under the sun, there’s nothing to worry about.” The first two assertions are probably correct; the third is probably not.

Want proof? Would you like to see just how addicting and powerful narcissism can be? Then let’s start with a conversation between two people who think it’s just hilarious to nearly kill innocent people through deliberate stupidity.

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“He must be in good shape…” well, that’s FAKE NEWS but the rest is true! Thanks to Bozi from the Boost Brothers for digging this up!

The Sports Car Club of America has been around since 1944, sponsoring amateur and professional racing in several diverse formats for thousands of racers during its existence. However, despite its long and storied history, the SCCA has another nickname—the Secret Car Club of America. The club hasn’t always done the best job of promoting itself and growing its membership over the years, resulting in an inevitable graying of the club’s membership.

As other motorsports organizations came into being in the last ten to fifteen years (24 Hours of Lemons, ChumpCar, American Endurance Racing, GoodGuys), the SCCA suddenly faced a significant amount of disruptive competition for new customers. In response, they hired Heyward Wagner (the man holding the Benjamin in the above photo with me and Friend of RG, Rebecca Turrell—sorry for that pic, Heyward) to be the Director of Experiential Programs—in other words, his job was to think up new events to attract and retain new members.

Among Wagner’s ideas is the wildly successful Track Night in America, now in its fourth season of existence, and Targa, a sort of mini One Lap that encompassed multiple motorsports disciplines (autocross, time trial, road rally, and trackcross) into one competition. And now, the SCCA is preparing to launch its latest venture, Time Trials Nationals, this September. Time Trials Nationals will take place at NCM Motorsports Park in Bowling Green, KY, and will consist of both a flag-to-flag timed session and a TrackCross, which is a point-to-point autocross-style time trial that involves only a certain section of the track.

I sat down with Wagner this week to talk about what it will look like.

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A few months ago, I spent two days at the Nurburgring with a Lotus Evora Sport 410 and a group of absolutely fascinating students. One of them is the fellow you see in this Mosport formula-car race video from 1973 — Ron Cohn. Now seventy years old, he’s still working on improving his touch behind the wheel. Ron sent me this video last night and I thought some of you would be amused by it. Most likely it was created to attract potential sponsors — there’s something charming about the idea of some executive having this film threaded through his office projector so he can see the adventures of Ron and his teammate at Mosport. If you’re interested in the Cosworth engine that powered these cars, there’s an explanation in somewhat stilted English here.