Yahoo Autos The Best Parts of Amateur Racing Are the People, Not the Cars
Week With a Car is a recurring look into the garage and multiple outdoor parking spots of Sam Smith, R&T's globetrotting editor at large. Expect it to hold magazine test cars, vintage race cars, whatever he's driving that week. The form-everything from road diary to rambling brain dump-varies, but it's always interesting. It doesn't always make sense, but then, that's Smith. -The Editors
THE CAR:
1972 BMW 2002 Vintage Race Car (VARA B-Sedan)
2.0-liter I-4, 210 hp @ 7800 rpm, 160 lb-ft
5-speed manual (close-ratio)
Rear-wheel drive
N/A mpg EPA
A RAMBLING AND YET STILL SOMEHOW EXPOSITORY FAQ/DISCUSSION ON THE VEHICLE, AS HAS SOMEHOW BECOME CUSTOM WITH THIS COLUMN AND SPACE:
What the hell is this? Oh, right: You like old BMWs. I forgot. Or maybe I didn't. (It's not like you let us forget, you dork.)
They're fun cars-easy to work on, cheap to repair, relatively capable and quick. Also, they're my soft spot. Over the last 15 years, I've had something like 15 or 20 E30s and a whole mess of other vintage BMWs. I love just about everything on wheels, but to borrow a line from David E. Davis, the 2002 looms large in my legend.
I've been reading your stuff for five minutes/a while/years. You don't have a legend.
It's a line. Of course I don't. My life story isn't even the commercial that comes before the trailer that comes before the movie that you would make about an actual person of interest. I mostly just write and work for this magazine and spend time with my kids, who are too young to be in kindergarten and thus have not yet outpaced me in emotional or intellectual development.
Also, David E. wrote this, famously, about the 2002. (Fun piece. Despite what people thought at the time, that article was not the result of payola.) I can't not borrow a line from the guy, you know?
So this little krautcan is . . . yours?
No. It belongs to my friend Mark Francis, out of San Diego. At the moment, I race it in the Vintage Auto Racing Association's B-sedan class, and also the Trans-Am B-Sedan 2.5 Challenge, in Southern California. Tracks like Willow Springs, Buttonwillow Raceway, and Spring Mountain Motorsports Ranch. B-sedan, as a vintage class, generally emulates the import-sedan racing of the 1960s and 1970s, as showcased in the SCCA's original 2.5 Challenge. VARA sees huge fields-at least for vintage racing-of Datsun 510s, Alfa Romeo GTVs, and BMW 2002s. Last month's B-sedan race at Willow Springs saw 28 cars.
If you wanted big fields, couldn't you go run Spec Miata or something? Spec E30? Some series with machines that weren't built before Jimmy Carter was president? Wouldn't that be cheaper too?
I like 2002s. They're relatively affordable, but they slide a lot and make angry-stupid-yowly noises. Driving one quickly takes work. Also, I've done a lot of club racing, including Spec E30 and Spec Miata. This is just something different. Racing isn't about absolute answers.
Yes it is. A lap time is an absolute.
[Looks off into distance.] Hey! Look over there! What's that?
Wait, what? [Turns around.]
Ah, nothing. Gone now. It was really something, though. You should've seen it.
Where were we? So Mark pays you to drive the thing, then?
[Collapses into laughter.] No, he doesn't. I'm an amateur club racer. No one pays amateur racers to drive anything. (Hell, I know a lot of pro drivers who aren't getting paid to drive.) Last year, Mark loaned me the 2002 for a season or two. Or rather, he loaned it to me and a few of my friends.
He just loaned it to you? Where? How? How is this even a thing? Didn't I read you writing that your garage barely has room for two motorcycles and the nation's funkiest BMW Bavaria? Where do you put it?
First off, it's the world's funkiest BMW Bavaria. And it's not really a Bavaria, it's a 2500. Same shell as the Bavaria, but not a Bavaria. Smaller engine, less interior fancy, lower value. People who own Bavarias sneer at people who own 2500s. (Or maybe they just sneer at me, because my car's interior smells like old toes and looks like it was lived in by a herd of elephants.)
God, I hate car pedants.
Then you are almost certainly on the wrong website.
So you and your friends, eh? Are they also huge nerds?
They are all cooler than me. This is not saying much. I write for a car magazine and (as we've established), am not even the commercial before the trailer that comes before anything important. The chief nutball in the running of the 2002 is my friend Ben Thongsai, a fabricator and BMW technician out of Chicago. He works with my friend Carl Nelson, who runs a shop in San Diego and is one of the nation's foremost authorities on vintage BMWs. We also lean heavily on Carl's son, Owen, an engineering and geology student at U.C. Berkeley. And a few other important characters to whom I should probably give shout-outs. (Hi, Andy! David! Dennis! Jonathan!) I'd tell you more about them, but that'd take space we don't have.
Oh, yes, because that's what these Week With a Car Q&A things are about. Efficient use of space.
Har har har. You're funny. Go fall in a hole. You know what I mean.
Carl and Ben like to find problems and engineer clever solutions. Owen likes to turn wrenches. I test the car, race it, don't hurt it, and give feedback. Plus, I've been drinking beer with some of these guys for years, and we're all friends. The only thing they ask of me is that I not touch anything important. (Despite the fact that I once worked as a professional mechanic, I am the world's slowest wrench. I build relatively nice things and don't make mistakes, but empires rise and fall in the time it takes me to adjust a set of valves.)
Wait. You didn't answer that question about how San Diego Dude loaned you the car. Don't you live in Seattle? And why the hell would a guy just loan you a race car? Is this ransom? Do you have compromising pictures of him or something?
I should ask Mark. Mark is an agricultural engineer who makes his living designing equipment for aquatic research. (Industrial-strength fish tanks! This is way cooler than it sounds.) He's also the world's most good-natured human. If I had compromising pictures of him, they would probably just feature Zebrafish husbandry and maybe also a carp that got drunk on scotch. Mark just loves fish and race cars and scotch. I don't think he's ever done anything ransom-worthy in his life.
So he's just being a nice guy.
Impossibly so. Mark purchased the 2002 several years ago, ran it in VARA for a few seasons, and then decided to focus on rebuilding his 1960s Elva Mark 7 sports racer. The Mark 7 is a small, fiberglass-bodied, tube-frame snot-rocket. It looks a lot like a Lotus 23, which means it looks a lot like a roofing shingle with a mid-mounted engine and blood in its teeth. The Elva wears skinny, treaded Dunlop race tires and is generally a billion leagues quicker than a 2002.
Predictably, once Mark focused on the Elva, the 2002 started to sit. You can't drive two cars at once, and Mark is a self-backed amateur. He preps his own cars, then tows them to the track and supports them there. A lot of people do this in club racing, especially in vintage. The advantage is in getting to know your own machinery; in Mark's case, the only downside was that he couldn't effectively drive two cars and be responsible for their prep in a single race weekend.
So he loaned the 2002 to Ben, Carl, and me. All he asked was that we try to make it faster.
Why? It's vintage racing.
As a thank-you? Also, he knew we'd do it anyway. Ben is the kind of guy who could go on vacation in some tropical paradise and still spend every waking moment thinking about camber curves and roll centers. Carl has two science doctorates. Owen is roughly three hundred times smarter than I am and about twice as agreeable as everyone else. Plus, a decade and a half writing about and testing new cars has given me a fine distaste for ill-handling anything. So they ask me what I want, what works and what doesn't, and then they make parts to chase it.
There has been a lot of chasing it. The last nine months have been a flurry of test days, fabrication, and more test days. We've stuck to the rules religiously and also focused on suspension development, because that's where we figured the car had the most to gain. (The engine was a known commodity; the M10 four-cylinder in the 2002 is more than five decades old in basic design. It makes just over 200 hp and spins to 8000 rpm.)
The process has been fun but also an interesting education-a long examination of subjects like handling balance, bump steer, roll center, and tire qualities in a car that has nothing like perfect suspension geometry or a particularly rigid tub. And while the car's development is only about half done, it's starting to pay results: In late March, at Willow Springs, we finished second overall in a field of 28 similar cars-Datsun 510s, Alfa Romeo GTVs, and other 2002s. A month before that, in Pahrump, Nevada, I won two races in one weekend.
You've done this before?
I've been road racing, as an amateur, in one form or another since 2003. Most of that was club racing, with sanctioning bodies like NASA, the SCCA, and AER. A tiny percentage of it has been in vintage, where the cars move around more and make artsy noise. Vintage is generally a bit more laid-back than regular club racing, but it also has the cachet of virtually nonexistent stakes. There is no national championship, there are no sponsor dollars, and everyone's just there to have fun.
Sounds neat.
It is! Come out and watch, see if you like it. (Watching is usually free, or a nominal entrance fee. At Willow, I think it was ten bucks per person.) If you see a car you like, ask the owner about it. People like talking about their cars. VARA's a friendly bunch.
You know, you've talked a lot about the people and very little about the car.
Ding ding ding! This is why I do it. As the editor of this website often says, cars are neat (He's right, I say this frequently - TO). But unless you're chasing the ladder and an F1 seat (and good luck with that), the people are the real reason to go amateur racing.
The racing is fun, of course. But I've raced a lot of cars and had a lot of fun in a lot of race cars. Fun can be had almost anywhere you take a flag. The people are the real commodity, and vintage is just one way to find them. Friends that you pick up while working toward a common goal end up being friends that you hang onto. Which means Mark, Ben, Carl, and Owen, but also Jack and Charley Baruth, with whom I share an MX-5 Cup car, in American Endurance Racing. Or my buddy Drew Doukas, out of Louisville, who is both a cheery malcontent and a weapon in a Spec Miata. Or or or. The list is long.
Maybe I should go amateur racing. Or into vintage, specifically.
Maybe you should! It's not cheap-you could get more seat time and flag time per dollar in Spec Miata, late-model oval racing, or a few other series. But the cars and people can't be beat. And there's never been a better time to do it. American vintage racing dates to the late 1970s, and a lot of the drivers who started in that period are aging out of competition. Which means there are a lot of old race cars available for cheaper than it would cost to build them from scratch.
Reminds me: What's that 2002 like to drive?
You're in luck! I once wrote a whole story about a similar machine! Oh, the coincidence! Who knew Sam had ever done anything with a BMW 2002, you guys?
You know, if this weren't so interesting, I'd almost call you annoying. But it's interesting. Is this 2002 any different from that one?
Little more grip, little more motor, a lot less history, but the same slidey-goofy fun. The car doesn't have a speedometer, but quick math says it tops out at Willow Springs-generally the fastest track on the VARA schedule-at around 130 mph. This with a relatively short differential and a 1:1 (i.e., direct, no overdrive) fifth gear.
Behind the wheel, you spend most of your time trying to make an old car that wants to go all-the-time sideways . . . not go sideways. Because sideways is slow, albeit less slow in old cars (which are often a bundle of engineering compromises) than new ones (which are usually not).
And, you know, you still go sideways a lot. Because it's an old car. Old cars live and breathe to go sideways.
For the record: Old cars are pretty great.
That reminds me: Why did you write about this, this week? There wasn't a new test car available, or something?
Well, I just got back from the Willow Springs race. That was fun, and it was on my mind. But I mostly just wanted to proselytize a bit about both vintage racing and VARA B-sedan. And the notion that the cars aren't exactly the main reason for going racing.
Everyone thinks it's about neat cars, driving, and competition. That's great. It is, to a large part. But I've done a lot of great racing with people I don't necessarily love. Or even just people I don't like. That wick always burns down, and you get tired, and you move on to something else-another race series, another hobby, whatever. If you chase the people, the wick gets longer, and you end up having a hell of a lot more fun.
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