A racing buddy of mine has one of those nagging wives. I ask him how he deals with it and he just replies "I ignore her and hang out in my Happy Place: under my race car". I'm not as mechanically inclined so my happy place happens to be at the racetrack. Yes, while others imagine serene views of cascading waves, birds chirping and lush green meadows, I think of fire breathing turbos, high octane racing exhausts and ground pounding V8's.

So during the off season, I was in severe withdrawl. Hmm, off season.... do we really have one?. I guess there really isn't a racing season in California. After all, we race eleven months a year. My friends in other parts of the country laugh when I tell them it's the off-season. "You mean a whole month off?" they usually say sarcastically. Yeah, we're lucky... but that one month seems like an eternity. And to those of you who live in seasonal states.... Hey move nearer the Equator, Snow is for Penguins!

2001 was a very successful season for the Pennyweb/RealRide.com Racing Team. Ben won the LA-Region's Super Unlimited Sportscar Championship in the #46 Mazda while Tim finished finished second in the #47 Mazda and Jim finished a close third. The #24 Honda with Don behind the wheel also won the Pro-Sedan 2 Championship. In the Enduro Championship, Tim and Jim won in car #47 with Ben following in #46 using a variety of co-drivers. We're still behind schedule in our ASC car, but it's getting really close at this point and we hope to have it running next month.

So what else is there to do for 2002? Defend the titles of course, unless somebody out there wants to sponsor us for a World Challenge or TransAm Season. After Ben blew up the engine during the second last race of 2001, we decided to turn it into normally aspirated power. Pablo of Mobius Motorsports, our engine builder and fabricator, put together a peripheral port 13B Rotary engine to work with our Haltech injection system. As usual, Tim downloaded a fuel map online from some guy in Australia which was enough to get the car running well enough to start but not smoothly. The next battle was scheduling dyno time, but it seemed that everybody had plans to go out of town on vacation. So one week turned into another, then another and pretty soon we found ourselves scrarmbling once more in the final days to get the car ready for the first event. I'm sure Tim has a more colorful way to describe the dyno juggling. And it was truly down to the last minutes, as Ben picked up the car on the day before the first race of 2002.

Meanwhile, we were also busy rebuilding the #47 car after it was destroyed in an incident at Willow Springs in October. This time, we went fiberglass on the fenders and nose. Our friend Tony Woodford in San Diego has a company (AWR) that builds fiberglass body parts for Mazda Motorsports. So after several trips to San Diego and bugging Tony, we got a bunch of fiberglass panels for the car. Having little experience in mounting panels, Tim and I spent many nights in the garage scratching our heads. But we finally pulled it off and though it will never pass for concours levels, we're pretty proud of our work. Between scrambling on the peripheral port engine and the complete rebuild of this car, we never got to the paint nor scraping off the undercoating. The latter is a dirty job and nobody wants to do it... actually our friend Robert Davis somehow conned his younger brother Jimmy into scraping undercoating off their customer racecars for beer so we were thinking of ways to do the same but Jimmy had already swapped the rollcage over for us and wanted nothing to do with scraping undercoating on the newer RX7's. Something about being screwed by his own brother was bad enough. We even offered import beer!

Don had been testing all winter long in the Honda... okay, January at Buttonwillow Raceway. He'd been working with the "CRX Mafia", a group in Southern California led by multi-time SCCA National Champion Ron Haase. This group had developed the CRX's to run lap times faster than most exotic cars and more powerful race cars.

the first race of the season at the California Speedway infield roadcourse, we showed up with the two Mazdas and the Honda. Ulysses and I each had prior commitments on Saturday so Tim had his brother Matt help out while Ben was sharing the expertise of Pablo Mobius with Tim, and Don went crewless. The event saw in excess of 115 Racecar entries, not counting the Drivers Education groups. Fastest lap times went to the ProTruck tube frame racetrucks with the American Iron (AI) and American Iron Extreme (AIX) muscle cars following closely. The ProSedan classes included Mazda RX7s (PS-1), VW Golfs/Rabbits (PS-1 & 3), a Datsun 240Z (PS-1), and of course the CRX's (PS-2). About half a dozen Spec Racers/Sports Renaults also showed up as did another dozen or so Camaro/Mustang Challenge cars. Our Mazdas ran in the ubiquous Super Unlimited/Orphan Group, basically a class for cars built with no rules. This group included Wayne Graham's fast E-Production Mazda RX7, Carol's (Holdener?) Ferrari 355 World Challenge Car, a 7's Only tube framed RX7 racecar and a Porsche 944 Turbo which ended up running in the ProSedan group for unknown reasons.The BMW Car Club of America (BMWCCA) also joined in with 40-50 expensive racecars. James Sofronas ran away from this group with his new World Challenge car (possibly ex-TC Kline?), turning in equal lap times to the ProTrucks.

Our original plan was to bring both Mazdas and use the weekend as a testing opportunity since neither had ever run in their current configurations. After the mess with the Dyno Shop, the #46 car was running reasonably well so Ben brought it out. Tim and I wanted to take the other car out to see if any of the body panels would fall off! Don was squeezing the last ounce of use on his cylinder head before requiring a rebuild (he already has a rebuilt head standing by) and didn't feel that this event was important enough to throw the new head on. Since I wasn't able to make it, Tim updated me in the afternoon with the following call: "Well, the yellow car (#46) was run on the Dyno without air filters so when we put on the filters it ran really poorly. We're not chancing blowing it up so Ben took it back, the other Mazda sprang several oil leaks (not unusual for a new car) which we've fixed". The Honda is dead nuts reliable so like a Timex watch, it keeps ticking....

On Sunday morning, Paul Maletich and I drove to the track with Justin (Sallows) and his friend Shaun following. Justin broke his leg in December while "Tree Bashing" on his snowboard. Any normal sane person would simply stay home until the bones healed, but we're talking about Justin "No Brakes" Sallows here. I get this phone call from him one day asking if Tim and I would mind helping him pop rivet a velcro strap to his transmission firewall. "Well, I figured that I could just velcro my broken leg to the firewall so I can operate the throttle with it and left foot brake". Justin has a dog ring gearbox so he doesn't need a clutch but he ran all last season without brakes in his 500+hp stockcar so he doesn't need that brake pedal anyway. "If we pit in the back where nobody can see us, you and Tim can just pour me into the window!". I refuse to participate in anything that could potentially kill one of my friends... Tim on the other hand was all for it, makes me wonder about him. I guess I was little help as I'd loaned Justin about 150 hours of incar race video footage, making him even more ansy to go racing. Luckily for everybody, Justin's leg has healed well enough that he's able to operate the clutch on his Porsche 930. He still hobbles around on crutches but uses his broken leg as a poor excuse to ride on the luggage rack of Tim's bicycle so he doesn't have to walk around the paddock. Paul is a recent convert to racing. He took his first High Performance Driving School at Buttonwillow last year and is hooked. He's currently shopping for a race car and is bouncing between getting a Pro7 or a ProSedan Honda CRX. At Willow Springs, he was thrown to the wolves by taking over as the Crew Chief when Tim, John Lindsey and I had to share driving duties. And he did an outstanding job, better than I could. I had met Shaun at an Alfa Club event earlier last year when he was Hot Lapping his vintage Camaro. He's been a driving force behind getting Justin's stockcar running, especially with his vast experience in General Motors cars.

hen Paul, Justin, Shaun and I arrived at the track, the #46 was already back home and the #47 car was on jack stands. Apparently Jim was driving the car when it sprang another oil leak. A quick run to the auto parts store and they were back with a case of oil. Tim also discovered that a front brake caliper bolt had backed itself out causing the caliper to bounce between the rotor and the inside of the wheel, it made a horrible clanging sound "Sounds like a bucket of bolts" Jim described. After retightening the oil fittings and replacing the bolt, the car was sent back out for final qualifying. Because we were planning the weekend as a mere shakedown, tires were not important, we ran old rotten Kumhos from last year. Despite this, the car with Jim driving, ran well with Wayne showing Jim the line. For several laps Wayne's RX7 led Jim around the track as they weaved through traffic. Then as Jim got ready to pull into the pits, a huge plume of white smoke came out of the exhaust pipe. The slow drive back to the pits cleared out any mosquitoes for miles. Tim popped the hood and after a short examination, we determined that the Turbo seal had gone away. Not a major disaster, but we didn't bring a spare turbo. Weekend over for the second Mazda. Don was left holding the Pennyweb/RealRide.com Racing flag.

The BMWCCA race was the first of four races on Sunday. James Sofronas simply walked away from the field in his World Challenge car. But the field was tightly bunched and there was a lot of passing going on. One of the more exciting BMWCCA races I could recall. The next race was the American Iron/American Iron Extreme and Camaro Mustang Challenge race. These ground pounders really sounded great with some of the cars exceeding 550hp. NASA officials had instituted a "no shortcut" rule as many cars had cut through the grass at one of the chicanes. And the officials meant it as several cars were called in for a Stop and Go penalty for this. The overall win went to Ross Murray in his Griggs Racing AIX Mustang. Tony Vageli won American Iron and the CMC win went to Don Campbell in a Camaro. The next group up was the ProTruck and Super Unlimited race. Wayne had the Super Unlimited race in spades as he simply dominated the pack. His FROG Team stands for Fast Racing Old Guy and he can really back it up. In the ProTruck race, the battle for second was where the action was at as two trucks swapped positions for several laps.

The final race of the day was the ProSedan Groups, Pro7, Spec Racers and Spec Miatas. Don qualified fourth overall. Bernardo Martinez's PS-2 CRX was on the pole with the Porsche 944 Turbo in second. Third was a Mazda RX7 PS-1 and right behind Don was a Nissan Sentra SE-R racer. The Spec Racers took the green first with the ProSedans following a few seconds later. Then each of the other groups followed in staggered starts in typical NASA fashion. When the ProSedans crossed the green flag, the Porsche 944 Turbo jumped to the lead with Bernardo in close pursuit. The Nissan Sentra outpowered Don's car down the front straightaway and passed him into the first corner. For the first half of the race, Bernardo and the Porsche ran closely until Bernardo passed for the lead. The Mazda followed in third with the Nissan Sentra in fourth. Don followed in fifth, with a pack of cars made up of the tube-framed RX7, the Spec Miatas, Gus' Toyota GTS and the Pro7's. The order stayed the same for the rest of the race but the action was in mid pack where Gus and Charlie Buzzetti, both friends, were dicing for position. Charlie was able to dive in on Gus at the final chicane before start and finish but Gus had the power down the straightaway. For several laps, Charlie tried to dive bomb Gus only to be blocked on the exit. A bit of a "Love Tap" to his back bumper at over 100mph didn't faze Gus at all. One could only imagine the fun these guys must have been having, the spectators were definately enjoying it. As the chequered flag dropped, the cars crossed the finish line in that exact order.

Although Fontana is about the same distance of a drive home from Willow Springs, somehow driving through the city seems to shorten the trip. Of course, a major accident on the freeway blew that theory as the highway patrol had to shut the freeway down to one lane. But having Paul rave about how much fun he had really made the drive more enjoyable. And because I had to drop Paul off, I was so glad that I didn't have to unload the trailer, poor Tim had to do it alone. RealRide/Pennyweb