A tale of 4 shirts

"RacinBob" (racinbob) 11/04/2018 at 11:18 • Filed to: None

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I was cleaning the closet and I can’t throw stuff like old racing shirts away. S o here’s some of them and their stories. The 1980's VW Ad campaign was Fah rverg nu gen “The Joy of Driving” . My first race car a was a 1980 ex-Bilstein Cup VW Rabbit. If you race a Rabbit, you gotta buy the shirt.

In 19 86, I and 6 other racing buddies entered a VW Rabbit in the Longest Day of Nelson Ledges 24 hour race. A t about 20 hours, our class leading BMW 2002 decided to body slam us for no reason while lapping us on the front straight. I guess it’s a BMW thing . About an hour later, his front spindle on that side broke. We won our class. Karma baby!

Our friend Chuck entered his Porsche 944 for the ‘89 race. These races were always a thrash because none of us had much vacation so we would leave the office at 3:00 on Thursday and drive 17 hours (55 mph speed limit) to be at the track for the 10:00 am Friday practice. After Friday test day and qualifying and night practice, we were beat.

The race started Saturday 3:00 PM and at 3:00 am that night , I am driving the night shift and nodding off asleep in a race car at over 100 mph. This is not good. Fortunately, we blew the engine in the next hour, so I avoided killing myself . The reason it blew was because nobody remembered to check the oil in the 12 hours we’d raced. I said we were tired.

In 2002, I was in Toronto for work during the Indycar Weekend. We are pretty sure Alex Tagliani was in the same small restaurant that we had dinner at one night . And i t was also pretty cool to see Paul Tracey cruising in his gold Acura NSX at about 10:00 PM downtown. 2002 was a good time and Toronto is one cool town to see a race at.

ToyotaFamily > RacinBob 11/04/2018 at 12:17

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That fahrvergnügen shirt is awesome, you should get it framed or something.