Hey all,
I've had a lot going on lately when it comes to racing lately so I thought I'd give you all an update. Last weekend the Grand-Am series was at Phoenix International Raceway, my home track, so we finally got to debut our Protege Grand-Am Cup car. All in all, it was a successful weekend: I unfortunately did not get to drive because I did not get my credentials through in time so my dad drove with a rental driver. The rental driver qualified the car fifth and started the race. He moved up as high as third and was then black flagged for aggressive driving. He pitted about 1 hour into the three hour race with severe body damage to the front of the car. After repairs and a driver change, my dad rejoined in fifth place and actually climbed all the way up to second. About 30 minutes from the end of the race, we were black flagged again due to the fact that the exhaust hanger broke and the pipe was creating quite a spark show. We then caught some bad breaks under yellows and never really recovered, eventually finishing fifth. The team was happy with the car--for its first time on track, it ran flawlessly, aside from the stupid stuff that happens to all new racecars.
In other news, we're officially out of World Challenge! The series has simply become too expensive to run competitively so we elected to do something else. We bought Leighton Reese's Banner Racing Trans-Am Corvette and we are in the process of converting it to AGT specs to run Grand-Am. All of the testing has gone well and the team is excited--this car won some Trans-Am races so we know it's fast, we just need to make it reliable. This should be interesting, though.
Haha...wow, I wrote a novel. Anyways, I'll keep you guys posted on future developements.

--tony

 

Great Tony!

Sorry to hear about the SWC... but Grand-Am should be more "fun"

Does SCCA or SPEED care to hear your concerns? Do they realize the direction they are going (big buget wins, low buget only wins Laguna, hehe sorry Roger)?

I like to see more grassroots series, so us "working class" can race too...

 

Wow. After seeing the Motorola Cup (now called Grand-Am) a few years ago at VIR, I have trouble believing that buying a used Trans-Am car to run in that series would be cheaper. Those guys were DAMN serious.

 

World Challenge was expensive for a number of reasons: In order to compete with the tegs and the bimmers, we had to sink a LOT of money into our humble little proteges. This means a lot of one-off parts and a lot of custom fab work--if any of these parts broke or failed, they were not cheap to replace. The result of this is $70,000 proteges. Yes, Mazda did help us a great deal, but it is impossible to run World Challenge competitively without a 6 digit budget. Also, the series is, as you all know, a crash-fest. A race doesn't go by without damage to the cars in one way or another. When you're running a three-car team, simply replacing body panels gets to be tedious, this isn't even taking more serious damage into concideration. Other factors like the tires, which suck, bring the cost up as well. The Toyos are really only decent for one session, then they should be replaced--this means multiple sets of tires for each car each weekend. Entry fees are high, the cost to get the cars to the track is high, crew expenses are high...the list goes on and on. Yes, the series is a blast to drive and very high profile, but is it worth the cost? You are literally spending tens-of-thousands of dollars for a 50 minute race.
Endurance racing is more subdued--there isn't as much contact. Everybody realizes that part of the trick to being successful in that type of racing is simply finishing--this means that they will give you racing room and not try stupid, kamakazi moves. Also, one of the main reasons we're getting into Grand-Am is the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona. It's an unreal expirience and a win there actually means something. This all is kind of trial-and-error...if we don't like Grand-Am, we'll most likely end up back in World Challenge. For now, the team decided that it was in our best interests to try something else for a while. We'll see how it works out...

--tony

 

Well.. good luck Tony.. Ill be looking out for you...

 

Thanks a lot! I appreciate the support.

--tony

 

Gotcha loud and clear Tony. Good luck. Perhaps I'll see you at VIR this year...