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Hi,
I will try to keep this short but will likely fail miserably.
My name is Keith and I am registered as KeithO on many racing and car forums. Some of you might know me from other forums.
Anyway, in brief, I started autocrossing in ~1999 and in parallel progressed through HPDE and Time Trials with NASA. In/around 2003, I became a NASA instructor and also a track instructor for BeaveRun, but have since stopped instructing (the then-new 2006 Z06 paired with a bad student permanently ended my instructing career). In 2004 at the first NASA OH/IN regional event at Nashville Superspeedway roval, I got my NASA race license and was very active in American Iron and later, Camaro Mustang Challenge (including being regional director of CMC for a few years). I continued active participation through the first race weekend in 2008. In 2008, I took a job assignment overseas and sold my race car, trailer etc. etc. In all, I have run 37 road races and have always finished races - no crashes and no car failures (I am proud of that stat).
Upon my return from my job assignment, I only had a street-legal, track-prepped WS6 Trans Am and ran time trials and lapping days with it through last spring. In May of 2010, in a complex transaction involving my WS6 and cash, I traded it for an old NASCAR Busch Grand National stock car, supposedly setup for road racing. This car had not been raced for many years and all of the safety items were well out-of-date. However, it was possible to run lapping days. Here are some pictures of my car. Most of these pictures were taken the morning after I got it home and most of the others were taking for documentation/research reasons:
http://rides.webshots.com/album/577804652jpMfnL
I spent 2010 going to lapping days checking the car out and I eventually found that it was set up for short-track ovals, not road racing. This made the car a handful but I was still able to muster some respectable lap times out of it with a bad setup and old tires. I am hoping for better results when I test in a couple of weeks. A friend of mine took an in-car of my car on the track in Sept at BeaveRun. As you can see, with the oval setup in it, it was a handful:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHA9IXkky1s
Since last fall, I have been working non-stop to beat the oval track out of it and also get it up to NASA and SCCA safety specs. In parallel, I purchased an enclosed trailer, winch setup and big block Suburban for a tow rig. This has been an expensive and exceptionally time-consuming effort but as of yesterday (last night, actually), I now have a car ready for the track and a rig ready to get it there.
In the next couple of weeks, I plan to take the car to a local shop to get my NASA and SCCA logbooks for it. I am very sure that I have covered all of the bases and I will fulfill both the NASA and SCCA requirements.
I live about 20 minutes from BeaveRun and have been involved with the track since it was built. In fact, I moved my family to my current location in 2006 partly because of the track. This year, I only plan to run BeaveRun and Mid Ohio (with an excursion to Watkins Glen if I am satisfied that the car is predictable and reliable). Since BeaveRun stopped their track-sanctioned race series and NASA has no scheduled events this year, I realized quickly that my choices were limited beyond the SCCA event at the end of July.
However, while thumbing through the latest Grassroots Motorsports Magazine, I saw the EMRA advertisement and got pretty excited. I have heard of EMRA and some local guys have run with you, but I have not yet run EMRA myself.
I have read the information on this site and it appears that my NASA license and (soon-to-be-obtained) NASA and SCCA logbooks will transfer without any real issues. I have every intention of running the May EMRA event at BeaveRun, assuming my track testing with my car goes well on April 29th.
First, is there anything I should be actively doing to make participation in this event easier for you guys and me? Second, since I am so close to the track and know the people that run it, is there anything I can do to help you guys out for this event? I would be glad to help.
Thanks,
Keith
PS I have stirred up some interest locally in your event on a local race forum called racepa.com Hopefully, we can help boost attendance and make this a successful event.
I will try to keep this short but will likely fail miserably.
My name is Keith and I am registered as KeithO on many racing and car forums. Some of you might know me from other forums.
Anyway, in brief, I started autocrossing in ~1999 and in parallel progressed through HPDE and Time Trials with NASA. In/around 2003, I became a NASA instructor and also a track instructor for BeaveRun, but have since stopped instructing (the then-new 2006 Z06 paired with a bad student permanently ended my instructing career). In 2004 at the first NASA OH/IN regional event at Nashville Superspeedway roval, I got my NASA race license and was very active in American Iron and later, Camaro Mustang Challenge (including being regional director of CMC for a few years). I continued active participation through the first race weekend in 2008. In 2008, I took a job assignment overseas and sold my race car, trailer etc. etc. In all, I have run 37 road races and have always finished races - no crashes and no car failures (I am proud of that stat).
Upon my return from my job assignment, I only had a street-legal, track-prepped WS6 Trans Am and ran time trials and lapping days with it through last spring. In May of 2010, in a complex transaction involving my WS6 and cash, I traded it for an old NASCAR Busch Grand National stock car, supposedly setup for road racing. This car had not been raced for many years and all of the safety items were well out-of-date. However, it was possible to run lapping days. Here are some pictures of my car. Most of these pictures were taken the morning after I got it home and most of the others were taking for documentation/research reasons:
http://rides.webshots.com/album/577804652jpMfnL
I spent 2010 going to lapping days checking the car out and I eventually found that it was set up for short-track ovals, not road racing. This made the car a handful but I was still able to muster some respectable lap times out of it with a bad setup and old tires. I am hoping for better results when I test in a couple of weeks. A friend of mine took an in-car of my car on the track in Sept at BeaveRun. As you can see, with the oval setup in it, it was a handful:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHA9IXkky1s
Since last fall, I have been working non-stop to beat the oval track out of it and also get it up to NASA and SCCA safety specs. In parallel, I purchased an enclosed trailer, winch setup and big block Suburban for a tow rig. This has been an expensive and exceptionally time-consuming effort but as of yesterday (last night, actually), I now have a car ready for the track and a rig ready to get it there.
In the next couple of weeks, I plan to take the car to a local shop to get my NASA and SCCA logbooks for it. I am very sure that I have covered all of the bases and I will fulfill both the NASA and SCCA requirements.
I live about 20 minutes from BeaveRun and have been involved with the track since it was built. In fact, I moved my family to my current location in 2006 partly because of the track. This year, I only plan to run BeaveRun and Mid Ohio (with an excursion to Watkins Glen if I am satisfied that the car is predictable and reliable). Since BeaveRun stopped their track-sanctioned race series and NASA has no scheduled events this year, I realized quickly that my choices were limited beyond the SCCA event at the end of July.
However, while thumbing through the latest Grassroots Motorsports Magazine, I saw the EMRA advertisement and got pretty excited. I have heard of EMRA and some local guys have run with you, but I have not yet run EMRA myself.
I have read the information on this site and it appears that my NASA license and (soon-to-be-obtained) NASA and SCCA logbooks will transfer without any real issues. I have every intention of running the May EMRA event at BeaveRun, assuming my track testing with my car goes well on April 29th.
First, is there anything I should be actively doing to make participation in this event easier for you guys and me? Second, since I am so close to the track and know the people that run it, is there anything I can do to help you guys out for this event? I would be glad to help.
Thanks,
Keith
PS I have stirred up some interest locally in your event on a local race forum called racepa.com Hopefully, we can help boost attendance and make this a successful event.
