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See ya at the track... |
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Naming Names
There are still some minor details to be executed, but for all intents and purposes the deed is done! The fire-breathing, National level GT-1 Corvette formerly known as "Lucifer" now resides at Joe Hooker's shop in Greenville, SC, while the #8 GTA Monte Carlo formerly known as "Blackie" is comfortably resting in it's new surroundings at the B.K. Racing shops in scenic Woodstock. GA. Joe and I (even though this is the first time since April of 1976 that I've not owned a Corvette) are both happy with the deal and look forward to our respective futures with a great anticipation.
Before launching straight into the new
car's name, I'd like to offer a bit of explanation to those that might have
been uncomfortable the last five years with my naming a car Lucifer. It had
nothing to do with devil worship or evil, but instead had EVERYTHING to do
with the car being being red & black, extremely hot and the realization of my
ultimate temptation. When I first talked to Johnny Miller about building the
car, my directive to him was "no GT-1 driver in the country will have better
equipment". My goal was to see if I could contend for the GT-1 National
championship and Miller Racing delivered a car that was up to the task. Ah
Grasshopper, be careful what you wish for.
The jury is still out on whether or not I
have the talent to run at the front at the Runoffs, but what became abundantly
clear is that I definitely don't have the budget to do so. My only regret in
executing this swap with Joe is that I never drove Lucifer as fast as he's
capable of going - that I never demonstrated what he and I are capable of.
That said, we DID turn a 1:28.5 last November at Road Atlanta with a blade
spoiler and two-year old BFG tires scarfed from Paul Newman's 2002 Runoffs
effort and no one can take that away from us. I firmly believe we could have
run 25's if not 24's with sticker Goodyears, a wing and the Trans-Am engine,
we just never got to show it. Joe has gotten an outstanding (I started to
write "awesome", but visions of Jeff Gordon kept popping into my head) piece
of machinery and I'll do everything I can to help him campaign it.
Looking to my future, I've often said GTA
is what GT-1 OUGHT to be. Because it uses off-the-shelf stock car parts,
racing a competitive GTA car costs about a quarter of what running a GT-1 car
at the front costs (said another way, we can do twice as much racing on half
the money). We've got some stuff to do to get it ready (like installing a
seat that will fit my plus-sized posterior), but the target right now is the
Alabama Region's double SARRC weekend at Roebling Road (Savannah) on July
8-10. If all goes as we expect there, our local debut will be two weeks later
(July 23,24) at Road Atlanta.
As far as naming the car, I started out
along the lines of "Nevermore" as in Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven" (yes, the
car IS black). Subtle certainly, but it also suggests there will be no more
cars in the line and I definitely plan to build another Corvette before I
retire from racing altogether. I then moved on to "Midnight" mainly because
"After Midnight" would be a great name for the next car, but Rusty Wallace
named one of his cars that and I can't stand Rusty Wallace. Then Tim Schmidt
and I were talking one evening and he mentioned there's a crow on the label of
Jose' Cuervo (Tim knows as much about tequila as he does racecars, and he
knows a LOT about racecars!), so he reckoned cuervo in Spanish might mean
"crow". After Google-ing it, I found that cuervo means "raven", which got
back to my original thought pattern. It used to be Joe's car, so "Jose's
Cuervo" fit well and "Monte Cuervo" has a nice ring to it. So after trying it
out for a couple of weeks, B.K. Racing is PLEASED to announce the new car in
the stable will hereafter be known as:
CUERVO !!!
The fact that all the Baptists who were
offended by "Lucifer" are STILL offended is just a wonderful bonus.
See ya...
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