It’s been a busy few weeks, both in and out of the kart! I’ve been working with several new sponsors on some projects this year, and so it’s been keeping me nice and active. I’ve been fortunate enough to be signed to RacerTimes’ Supported Driver Program. RacerTimes has been an amazing sponsor helping me to get the competitions. Through their driver program as a supporter of grassroots racing, they have really helped take my racing program to the next level.
So in one of our last posts, I told you about how we’re been running around a lot in the background with StartingGrid on some recent projects. Continue reading
A few weeks ago, I posted a concept image of a GT300 version of the Toyota Prius. I remember at the time commenting that if that car were to actual exist, then the Prius would ascend to new levels of coolness. (Which wouldn’t be hard, since the Prius already starts at a -2.)
Enter the Tokyo Auto Salon. With a joint partnership between Team APR (who fielded two Axio GT in seasons previous) and TRD, the Toyota Prius will be entered in the GT300 Class of Super GT.
With the new Prius in the mix, I think it’s fair to say that being ‘green’ just got a little bit cooler. Not much information has been released, but I think that it’s cool to see this car in the metal.
What do you guys think?
Yep, I did put all of those words in one title. Yes, it is all true too.
I just found out that this road-racing prepped 2001 Ford Focus is up for sale. The surprising part is that I also know the person who is selling it!
The owner is Don Wooten, who was my rally driving instructor when I went up to DirtFish Rally School. I first met Don when I was racing in Solo II autocross, and he was using this same car. It pulls at the racer heart-strings to see it go.
Don’s a really great driver, and he always takes good care of his cars, so I wanted to write a quick feature for him to help get the word out.
It always sucks to find out that a local racer has to sell his beloved ride. However, that is always a new buyer’s gain, as that means is that the car is always excellently prepped and has a good build history. (I learned that lesson when buying Kyoko.)
The crazy part about this car, is that it is street-legal! Can someone say “Race car for the road?!” If I had the money, I would buy this and turn it into my road racing car.
I would almost never want to feature a car that was sitting on *gasp* Craiglist *gasp*, especially with the horror that Kasumi caused me.
However this car made such an impression on me after being brought to my attention, I couldn’t help myself! This car is sitting pretty local to me at 425 Motorsports. Maybe we should go down and check it out ourselves! They aren’t that far away from where I’m sitting right now.
In the interest of getting to know the readers a bit better (and have them get to know me a bit better), I wanted to pose a couple of questions:
What was your first race car? (If you have never raced, what was the first car that really captured your imagination?)
My first race car was a 2000 Subaru Impreza 2.5RS. This was the first generation chassis, and it was a 4-door manual. I beat this car up at autocrosses, rallycrosses, off-pavement TSD rallies, and track days. It was put into service at the end of 2000 and retired from service at the end of 2005.
This car was pretty darn gutless, but it was also incredibly stable on-throttle. Even on packed snow, you could just stand on it.
It was a great starter car, but it also taught horrible driving habits. The only real incident the car suffered was the result of a miscommunication between my co-driver and I on a winter rally (oh… turn here!)… I put the car into a snow bank, but backed right out and kept on going.
If Subaru would sell me a new one of these, I’d buy it.
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