Trackday Diaries: My Stupid Mouth

“Should I start racing with NASA, or should I build a car for SCCA?” That used to be the most common question that I heard from would-be novice racers. Nowadays, though, those two sanctioning bodies aren’t even in the picture. Today’s novice racer is looking at LeMons, Chump, WRL, and my personal favorite, American Endurance Racing. It’s easy to understand why. If you start racing with the SCCA or NASA, you’ll either need to be capable of doing everything yourself soup-to-nuts, or you’ll need a crew, whether volunteer or paid.

With the new endurance-racing series, you get five other dudes together (or, in the case of my AER team, four other dudes and one chick) and — PRESTO! — you’ve got a team, a crew, and a way to split the expenses six ways instead of, uh, one way. I know a fair number of people who have left NASA or SCCA to focus exclusively on street-tire enduros, but I’m not ready to follow them just yet. I like sprint races. I like being solely responsible for my success (or failure) on the track. I hate not being able to split the costs but I also like the fact that cars last a lot longer when you run them two hours a weekend instead of twenty.

This weekend, NASA is holding a race at Mid-Ohio. Danger Girl will be there driving her Fiesta in HPDE since her race car is still being prepped in Memphis. I’ll be there as well, to help her out a bit, say hi to people, and serve as random crew for people who need a hand. But I won’t be racing, because I’ve been banned. And, I have to say, it was my fault.

This isn’t the first time I’ve been disciplined by NASA. To the contrary. I got into two separate scraps with the same dude in 2007 and 2008 that resulted in multiple penalties for both of us, my demotion off a National Championships podium, two totaled cars, and a very steep bill from Mid-Ohio for replacement concrete barriers. I think there was also a ride in a LifeFlight involved. I remember getting into a screaming match with the fellow who owned the NASA region at the time. He was telling me to stop writing public articles about my NASA penalties.

“I have the right to write about any God-damned thing I want!” I snarled.

“And I have the right to have you escorted off the premises at every NASA race from now until the end of time,” he replied.

“I see your point,” I said.

All of that stuff is long in the past, all amends have been made, and everybody’s cool, even me and the dude I wrecked those cars with. In recent years, I’ve committed to keeping my temper in check both during and after the races. There was a minor incident last year where I got into a bit of a shoving match on-and-off-track with some dudes from Jersey, but that was resolved to everybody’s satisfaction and we’re all pals. As I enter my late middle age, I’m really mellowing. Fatherhood helps too, although the first time some other kart kid wrecks my son I’m sure I’ll have an agitated moment or two.

Two months ago, I raced the Neon with NASA. There was no way I was going to win — I’m hugely down on power and racing a car that wasn’t competitive when I built it eight years ago — but I was able to push to the front once or twice before the other guys caught up to and drove around me. I had a good time. Everybody was very nice.

During conversations with another racer who was not in our class, I was told that a particular car was “bad fast,” meaning that it was probably skirting the edge of the rules. At the time, I didn’t really care either way. I was happy that my car finished. For the past year, I’ve tried to make my Frankenstein minivan/Neon/Stratus engine work in the car. It works now. It’s not stunningly fast, but it starts and runs. (Until it overheated at the AER race, but that’s another story.)

After I published a story about the race, another driver in my region decided to “correct some facts” about what I’d written. His “correction” was basically a long brag about how one of his buddies always wins and gets free tires and therefore I should tell everybody that racing in NASA is free because his buddy gets free tires. I had some serious issues with what he’d written, so I contacted him privately. Somehow, the regional director of our series got involved. We had a contentious but civil discussion.

During that civil discussion, he decided that my car was illegal because it was a motor swap. Strictly speaking, it’s an assemblage of Mopar engine parts that equates to a 20-percent stroked Neon motor, and that’s what I’d written on my class form. But because I’d gotten him angry, he decided that he was going to use what limited power he had to kick me out of the race.

I appealed to the National director and was told that I could race my Neon as long as I came up with a dyno sheet for the car. I was also told that I was not allowed to match the power-to-weight ratio of the regional director’s car. You see, the regional director races in his own series, against me. It’s not a big gap, but it’s a difference that will be noticeable in every front and back straight we race.

I’ve traveled nonstop for Road & Track over the past few weeks, so I was unable to get my poor little Neon to a dyno between three weeks ago and today. So I won’t be racing NASA this weekend. The question for me is whether I’ll ever bother to race NASA again. I love NASA, and I really like the way they try to find a place for everybody to race, but I also don’t really care for the idea of racing against my own series director using rules that place me at a deliberate disadvantage. I also don’t care for the idea of being grounded for a race weekend because I had the temerity to disagree with the guy.

So this is what I’m going to do. I’m going to race SCCA at Mid-Ohio this fall instead of racing NASA at Mid-Ohio. I’ve never raced an SCCA amateur event; everything I’ve done sprint-race-wise has either been NASA or a pro series like Grand-Am or CTCC. If the SCCA can class the Neon — I’m thinking ITE, so I can go heads-up against Corvettes — I’ll race the Neon. If not, I’ll buy or rent an SCCA-legal car and do that.

After that race, I’ll determine whether I’m going to:

A) swallow my pride and try to come up with enough extra talent to overcome my legislative disadvantage in NASA;

Watch this space. But I can say this: pending a few things, I’ll also be making my return to “pro” racing in 2017 with an appearance or two in the Pirelli World Challenge. I’ll also be racing the AER event at Mid-Ohio in October and every AER race I can get to next year. But for now, my answer to the old “SCCA or NASA” question will be: Please hold!