Well here is the BIG Announcement, which probably isn’t that big unless you are Craig or I, or apparently Evan who won a used clutch for being able to use Google. Without prolonging the suspense here it is –
DTOM Racing is building a car for the 2011 Continental Tire Challenge Series in the ST class.
There it is. Take a second to absorb it, let it marinate. There will be an entire FAQ devoted to various aspects of the plan, the people involved, to come shortly with the redesign of the site.
This little post will do nothing more than give the background to that bold statement.
Roughly towards the end of last year as I changed brake pads on my car for roughly the 4000th time, I started to get sick of E30’s. Since I’m not 17 and I’m not fascinated with smoked taillights (sorry Jason) the BMW was more of a means to an end (racing), than a real love affair with the car anyway. Around this same period of time Craig had toyed with a notion of selling his car and buying a 911 to club race. We’d talk back and forth about what to do ‘next’ and never come up with good solutions.
Roundel, which is the BMW Car Clubs monthly magazine generally sucks, but there is one dude that is pretty sharp (Sam Smith) and about the only thing worth reading in that rag. He wrote an article on the lifecycle of club racers. I think his conclusion was that the life expectancy was around 3 years. I started doing Driver Schools back in 2005 (maybe 04?), I’ve gone through my motivations before; however I like to make progress and feel like I’m learning something. Not that I am, by any stretch, an E30, SE30, Racing, or BMW expert but you get to the point where there are diminishing returns. His premise was basically this ‘hobby’ requires so much commitment in time and money that people get burnt out. There is also very little future in it so unless your are independently wealthy the chances of you moving up the ladder to any significant ‘pro’ series is between slim and none. Since most people involved in racing are competitive by nature this lack of forward progression will burn you out if the cost and time thing don’t do it first.
I recognized this as I started to get within striking distance of Clay’s, Seth’s, and etc lap times. The Traqmate that had served me so well in getting to this point was not showing the easy “1 second here” gains. So I ‘invested” in a fancier data rig hoping that additional sensors and doodads would further illuminate those little differences I needed to work on. Well it certainly did, unfortunately I didn’t like the answer. There are no more easy gains. It is a .1 of second here, or .05 in this corner. , as anyone that has met me for more than 10 min. can attest I’m hopelessly impatient. The thought of grinding out lap after lap trying to whittle away at .1 is depressing. Consider how miniscule .05 of a second is. The thought of whittling away for years while continuing to work on a 20 year old car started to feel more like a job than fun.
That realization, combined with Dave White going off to pro race land really started to depress me. (Not because Dave isn’t qualified just because he was my enduro partner last year.) I had witnessed the BeerTech team disappear as JP sold his car, Brian Jones fell ‘in love’, and Scott McMinime worked more and more. Rev. Al was also a less frequent character in the DTOM stories, Sasha had brain damage from the fun run, and Travis also had a baby and sold his car. In short I felt like the kid in highschool that is a junior and all his senior friends are going off to college and he is left behind. I had usually crutched on Club Racing to provide entertainment when the SE30 stuff was thin on the ground but now with Brendan’s car in various pieces this was less of an option. So what to do, what to do?
For some reason one day I read the Grand Am rules and it slowly dawned on me. This wasn’t a World Challenge $500million car with bespoke invented pieces from the Space Shuttle parts bin that needed a Doctorate in engineering to understand. This was more like Spec E30 writ large. In the meantime Craig had settled on the 911 path, he was looking at cars and close to buying one. I pitched him my idea of building a ST car. He wasn’t particularly interested. BMW’s as race cars just aren’t as sexy as 911’s that is pretty much a fact. I told him to mull it over, and I continued to do my due diligence. I pitched my idea to Clay. This was the watershed moment. I’ve pitched hundreds of ideas to Clay of various levels of absurdity; most of them have him investing a certain amount of time or money into my racing career. To date he has politely declined these awesome opportunities with a terse “not interested”. This time he said “Might Work”. Those words were like the red cape to the bull.
Suffice to say here are a few DTOM guiding principles that make this possible:
1) Lots of sympathy and guidance from Clay and BimmerWorld
2) Free help from awesome mechanics Brendan, Jason and Ted.
3) If we don’t make the field some of this is about the journey not the destination. We’re pretty optimistic but sometimes a change of scenery is just as important. And besides train wrecks are interesting too. An add on to this is our competitive desires. We don’t really plan for this car to run up front at least initially and with Craig or me driving. We’re sort of doing this for fun?
4) Provide lots of DTOM fodder for public consumption, different then the typical SE30 race reports and blogs that now seem to be all the rage. Hopefully everyone will enjoy following along with our trials and tribulations regardless.
Actually accomplishing this was going to be a lot lower percentage without Craig. Having a partner makes my economic hardship much less, he has a pretty sweet garage which isn’t a race shop but can play one on TV if needed. Unfortunately he still wasn’t convinced. That was until he mentioned it to his wife, and although I have no proof of this, she must have found out that Patrick Dempsey is involved in Grand Am at some point. The rest, as they say, is history. With his family support secured all of a sudden being a ‘pro racer’ looked a lot more appealing then just another 911 douche bag club guy. My family discussion went like this:
Me: “Hey I think I’m going to go pro racing.”
Wife: “What is that going to cost?”
Me: “About the same? (voice cracking)”
Once lighting didn’t strike me dead, I quickly added “Dave White races in this series”. That drew a blank stare, so I tried again, “Patrick Dempsey races in this series.” Done and done.
So stay tuned. Since we’re going to make this a little more pro-fess-ional, we’ll get better about pictures and videos, etc instead of just my fancy written BS. Strap in and come along for the ride, even if we put it in the wall I can promise it will be fun and worth the time.
If you’re reading this I also assume that you have some interest in racing so if you have questions hit us up at dtomracing at gmail.com . We don’t have lots of answers but we do have lots of opinions!
Donor car arrives in Atlanta on Tuesday, probably picked up Friday. Giddy up!
Next Episode – working title “So You Say You Boys Want to Buy a Racecar”
Labels: Big Announcement, Contest
