We started racing along time ago, in the early 80's. Life was good. I must admit that the very early times were tough, since I didn't want to go through a career of being a mid-pack racer. But out of the blue, in January 1984, I won my first race, going away, and followed it up the following day with another win, though that one was a bit more hard-fought. I don't know where the new-found speed came from, but all of a sudden racing was a lot more fun. I started racing in the Skip Barber Series when Skip was using the now-ancient Crossle 35F, before he went to the Mondiale chassis. Here's how it looked:

This would be me nipping two-time Daytona winner Jeremy Dale in the pouring rain (on the left).

On the right, we're running the Mondiale chassis in practice for the invitational Formula Ford race before the Tamiami Indycar Race in 1985.

After running Skip for a few years, it was time to go a little faster. I had won about 20% of the races I'd entered, finishing in the top 4 about 60% of the time. But that need for speed thing, well...it gets everyone who races sooner or later.

First I tried running with the real thing--the 1986 12 Hours of Sebring in a IMSA Camel GTU Mazda. It turned out to be held together by chewing gum and duct tape, but going into the race we didn't know the car's condition. About 3 hours into the race, at full speed headed for the Camel Bridge, The car filled with smoke and lurched to the left. The floating sensation that followed turned into a massive vibration, and I was able to nurse the car back to the pits. As it turned out, the left front shock tower broke in half, and the only thing holding the front suspension on was the rod through the center of the shock. Beautiful. It did finish, but only because the car's owner managed to cobble together a repair for the last lap. I'm looking for a picture of that car.

And here it is, as shown at the St. Petersburg Trans-Am race:

On the left is the somewhat goofy C/Sports Racer we ran. Goofy, but when it ran it was a bullet; it lowered the track record in qualifying for the class at Lime Rock Park from 55.37 to 53.237. It's a Ralt RT-5, powered by a AMW flat 6-cylinder two-stroke motor. Here's the car at Pocono, in the rain, setting fast lap before a seized throttle shaft put the car into the wall on the banking.

We soon figured out that the open-wheeled configuration was a little easier to maintain, and ran Formula Continental, Formula Atlantic, and Pro Super Vee with the car, which had miserable engine reliability. The pictures are from Bryar Motorsport Park, Watkins Glen, and Cleveland. I had to include the rather unglamorous side, as well--that's crew chief Tom Bechet with the car in F/C configuration--anyone remember when Lime Rock wasn't paved?

The quest for reliability led us to the IMSA Firehawk Endurance Series, where I teamed with what would be a long-time co-driver, John Drew. The cars below were backed by GT Motorsports, which was the Ford dealer in Sebring, with a little back door from MotorCraft, Ford's parts arm. We had a lot of fun learning that Showroom Stock was really how well your rules...ah...interpretations (yeah, that's the right word..) could be implemented (and hidden).

That's the ex-Archer Brothers Eagle Talon masquerading as a Mitsubishi Eclipse. It was a great runner, but we really had no idea how to make power out of it. Even when we really pumped the boost up, the best we could muster was a fifth. The far right is one of Paul Rossi's Dodge Daytonas. It was the fastest Firehawk car of its day, and this picture is from Portland, where we finished second to Jeremy Dale and Terry Earwood after a splash and go turned into a 1:37 pit stop. They were great cars to drive.

We did a little more Firehawk work --most notably again in Gary Blackman's Ford Probes--and a little more Skip Barber, to keep in shape--before going to Daytona for the first time in Rob Collings' Porsche. The car had won the prior year in a largely stock class using street tires, but that class was no longer running. Imagine our surprise when we found out we had--you guessed it--street tires. It was a bit of a struggle to make the field, but we did, in one of those scream-in-your-helmet laps. It was a 2:11 lap (1996). At one a.m., the car retired with a broken gearbox selector rod. We pushed that car around at Sebring in very hot conditions, which was miserable with the street tire setup. Late at night, though, it cooled down, and we could run down some of the early day runners. We finished 8th in class, 24th overall; that was good enough to win the "Exxon Hard Charger" award (500 gallons of racing fuel) for moving up the most places (from 71st on the grid to 24th overall).   In 1997, we returned to Daytona with real tires (but still a largely stock engine), and ran straight into the Andy Evans affair. Andy decided to limit the field to 80 cars, which prior to that had been a bit of a loose limit. But the letter of the rulebook that day was you had to qualify within 110% of the fastest car in your class, and 130% of the overall fastest qualifier. Notably, we ran 2:07's and were comfortably within the rules. But some of the cars in faster classes, that weren't within the 110% rule, were allowed to run, booting us from the race.  Welcome to the big time.

From left to right, 1996, 1997, 1998-99, 2003, all at Daytona.

In 1998, we returned with Mark Greenberg's 3.8 RSR  Porsche, a real race car. This was the 1993 race winner (GT3 class--the Lilian Byner car). We had a great group supporting us. I qualified the car ok, not great, at around 2:01, but we weren't thinking that we should qualify at anything other than a comfortable race pace. It served us well. At the end of 21 hours, we were 3rd in class.  We lost three laps when we ran out of clutch fluid, but finished 13th overall, 6th in class. That 8+ minutes in the pits cost us 9th overall and a podium in class.

In 1999, we had high hopes. We qualified slightly faster, (2:00) and when the race started promptly lost the ring & pinion.  I had hoped to go back in 2000, and was having conversations with both Mark and the Roock Porsche team that had won GT2 in 1998. Two weeks before the race, my son was diagnosed with diabetes, and life took a bit of a different route for a while.

The only real racing activity between 2000-2003 was private testing sessions for the Tyrrell. But in late 2002, Mark acquired a 2002 Porsche GT3 RS, which really stepped up the pace for us. We tested in the 1:57's, which seemed to be comfortable, given that our approach was to run in the 1:57-1:59 range for a race pace. Qualifying in mid pack, in the second hour we lost 27 laps --to dead last, which was 46th--when one of the drivers ran over a piece of debris, mistaking the noise for engine failure. 12 hours later, we'd climbed back to 19th overall with a pace that would put us comfortably in the top ten, perhaps as high as 5th or 6th. But it was not to be, as a late night tangle put the car on the trailer.

Of course, these guys need a little coaching before they make headlines...

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