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I am the Membership Chairman and Webmaster of the Mohawk Hudson Region of the Sports Car Club of America.
If you are located in the upstate NY area, and would like some more information about Mohawk Hudson, check out the Mo-Hud web page or send me E-Mail. If you like motorsports and want to join the fun, become an SCCA member now! You don't need a sports car, just enthusiasm.
I started out ice racing in a series of Corvairs, going from last place to second in my first race. In my final year on the ice, I ran a Fiat 850 Spyder. This car was heavily modified for the ice in terms of engine, suspension, brakes and aerodynamics, reaching a top speed of over 90 mph on the longer staightaways. The faster we went the better the car was. It was always a hoot when people misidentified the car as an Alfa. That season I achieved a record of three firsts two seconds and a third with one dnf. Unfortunately, I was in college and had Calculus quizzes on Mondays so I missed a couple of events and did not win the class championship. It sure was a lot of fun beating cars with probably 100 more horsepower though.
Overlapping ice racing in the beginning, I ran small bore formula cars. I started with a Cooper 
T76 and 
progressed to a Brabham BT28/35 Formula
C car (equivalent to the old 1 litter European Formula 3) and in the last few campaigned Formula Fords. The first
ford was a Crossle' 45F then in 1986 I bought a new 62F. Unfortunately, the 62F is sitting in the barn with a blown
motor right now.
I'm a Skip Barber Racing
School graduate. I was one of the first students to attend the school when it was located at Thompson Speedway
in CT. Skip had three Lola FF's, three Alpha sports cars and his personal Alpha sedan available for training. Since
I couldn't fit into the sports cars (too tall), I got to drive Skip's car. I had ice racing experience and had
been flogging the Brabham around for half a season so I guess he figured I wasn't going to chuck the thing into
a guard rail. Before one of the sessions, Skip said: "Run the air conditioning if you want, no sense being
uncomfortable, and if you want to play the radio go ahead". I ran the air... it was really hot. It was a good
school and I was the quickest student by about three seconds per lap after overcoming problems that I had doing
threshold breaking.
My instructor was Bill Prout, a really good and patient teacher. He was one of the quickest FB pro drivers of the 1970's till he ran low on sponsorship. There were six students, including Judy Stropus, timing and scoring guru and now occasional semi-pro racing driver.
The school was not without incident. When Judy was out in her session an airplane almost landed right on top of her Lola. It seems the guy had taken off from a local airport in a rental and forgot to check the gas. He ran out just in time to land on the back straight! Seeing the plane go through the curve leading onto the oval was quite a sight. There wasn't much space.
It was also during the school that Mark Donahue died in Europe as result of a F1 crash. Nobody mentioned it until the end of the school and everyone was quite saddened by the news. It was a chilling reminder that racing sometimes can be dangerous.
I took a break from racing while getting my undergraduate degree. In 1984 I went back into it, taking the Skip Barber advanced school at Lime Rock. I had two instructors at this school, the unique Bruce McGinnis and the personable Carl Lane Lopez. Bruce is probably the best racing driver in the US to not have become famous. People who saw him win the last (I think) Can-Am at Lime Rock in the rain in a car that was marginal at best would know what I mean. And of course his FF exploits are legendary. Carl can be seen now on TV co-hosting the Kart racing championships from California. You can also see his smooth driving style and remarkable commentary in the Skip Barber Racing Video "Going Faster".
There were a couple of folks in the school that have gone on in racing. One is Joe Pezza, who now races in Trans Am and IMSA regularly. The other, Wally "I never met a race car I didn't like." Dallenback Jr. has won championships in Trans Am and now is a regular in the NASCAR Winston Cup.
After a long break from racing, I ran one SBR racing school series races and was incredibly rusty. My performance almost made me give up, but not quite. It was particularly instructive (and somewhat demoralizing) to get an on track view of some of the competition that day at Lime Rock. John and Jeff Andretti. Pretty spectacular! These guys are good (also very personable and with a really good attitude, Mario and Aldo, fathers of Jeff and John respectively, raised those kids up right).
The
latest Skip Barber experience occurred a few years ago when I was more solvent. My plans for the last half of the
1989 (I think it was '89) season was to drive selected pro series races. I ponied up the bucks and did a test day
at Lime Rock in a pro car. This was in the days when the cars were powered by turbo SAAB motors and ran on shaved
road tires. I did 80 laps in the car and did well enough to have qualified fifth on the grid at the race they just
ran on a prior weekend. I did a curve fit on my lap times. They were still falling and in twenty to forty more
laps I should have been down to very near the lap record. This was really important to me as I had not been
doing very well in the Crossle' and needed to confirm whether it was me or the car that was slow. It was the car.
Unfortunately, my finances declined and I was unable to run the series at all. But boy, what a ride! The turbo took a lot of getting used to, particularly when I lifted off the throttle. It took seconds for the turbo to spool down. In my first session I was nearly off at big bend every few laps. The car was bottoming so I switched to a car that had stiffer springs, made some roll bar adjustments, altered my driving style and soon got the hang of it. The later sessions turned out just fine.
The next season I did a lot of testing. I found I had a rear damper that died if the ambient temperature was over 80 degrees F. Also the spring rates were about 40% too low and there was a camber curve problem (since fixed by Crossle' or so I'm told) in the rear. Running more positive static camber proved to be a work around for the problem. It also did nasty things to the inside of the rear tires but the car cornered as if on rails.
I only had one race in the now really good car when I blew the motor while running about fifth. The #1 small end bearing insert caused a rod failure due to improper assembly by a local Albany area shop, sorry Ted, should have had you do it 8-( >. BTW - this is a good example of "penny wise and pound foolish". To save $1000.00 I lost $3500). Tip of the day - don't get machine work done at your local speed shop, go to a FF engine builder like Marcovicci-Wenz, Quicksilver or the like.
Unfortunately, unless Ed McMahon shows up at my house, or Member View sells to every SCCA region, Rotary Club and Elks Lodge in the country, I won't be on the track any time soon.
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