A (long) automotive love story......

[RayYork]

I recently completed a 2 day SCCA licensing camp and it made me reflect on just how much and why I love cars and racing. I was inspired to write about it. Enjoy:

The man….
I have always loved cars, always! I cannot remember a time in my childhood when my favorite toy was not a car or truck of some sort. I can still remember my Hotwheels carry case and how I had so many cars that had to be with me that I figured out how to double stack them in the case so that I wouldn’t need to leave one behind. Most boys want to grow up and be policemen, firemen, or cowboy but not me, I dreamt of being a racer!
I remember going to a car show in Seattle with my mom and the man that would eventually become my step father and seeing a jet drag bike. My eyes were huge! MOM!!! Can you imagine how fast this thing goes?!? She and my step dad looked at me and said “not on your life!” Of course as a kid, “no” is just a word, it’s another opportunity to make your case, so I stuck with it. I stuck with my argument that I SHOULD RIDE ONE OF THOSE ONE DAY that they eventually had to shut me down pretty hard. Dream dashed………. for now, I’m still young.
A year or two later my dad and step mom took me to “64 Funny Cars” at Seattle International Raceway (now known as Pacific Raceways) and boy was my blood boiling! “DAD!! WE HAVE TO BUILD ONE OF THESE AND RACE IT!!” “Uh huh, just sit here and enjoy the races” he said. A soft “no” but a no none the less. I’ve done this dance, I know what to do! “But Dad, we don’t have to build one of those big Funny Cars! We can build one of those Anglia’s, I like those better and I bet they cost less!” (Side note here, that was the one and only time in my life that I ever liked a Ford Car and to my defence, I didn’t know it was a Ford at the time). Dad shot me down again and I let it go. Dream dashed again but I have a plan!
Pa! (my paternal grandfather, the man who raised me) “Pa! I know what I want to do when I grow up!” Keep in mind that we were a conservative lumber mill family and our entire family worked for our sawmill (including my two cousins and me starting when we were in grade school) so there was a definite expectation that I would graduate high school and proceed directly to the mill. “What do you want to be when you grow up Ray?” “I want to be a racer! I want to race cars for a living!!!” Pa, loved me with his whole heart and I know that he only ever wanted the absolute best for me but he broke my heart, and I believed at the time, my will, with his next statement. “That’s a terrible idea Ray. You can’t possibly understand how dangerous that is. If you race cars you will get killed doing it”. Dream nearly extinguished……….
Through my pre-drivers license days I managed to finagle my way into a couple of cars that I could drive around my grandparents property. I had my own (dirt) road course on their 7 acres in Arlington. It may have been a 5MPH max track but in my head I was doing 120MPH trough Le Mans! I hit turn 1 so hard that I would get my 1960 Comet up onto two wheels and carry it out to the straightaway like it was supposed to happen that way. Then I got my license……..
My first streetcar was a 1966 SS396 Chevelle and it was one bad ass mofo! When I rolled into town the day I bought it I still remember the look in Bobby B’s eye when he saw the car and then the gap in his jaw when he saw it was me driving it! I was (and still am to some of my high school friends) that Chevelle and it was me. We were inseparable and in love. I learned the hard way about how bad things can go when drag racing and how it could hurt my heart when the result of a mistake I made on the track broke my baby. There were a few motors, a few transmissions, rearends and soooooo many tires but my biggest disappointment came when I wrecked my baby. I had slicks on and was headed to town to line ‘em up at Boetcher’s farm but I was going to follow my best friend to his girlfriend’s house. Well, slicks, showing off and damp backroads don’t mix. Long story short, I lost traction and wrapped the back my my baby around the back of her car and that was that. She wasn’t done but she was down for the count. It took 6 months to save up the money it was going to take to get the damage repaired. I worked my tail off to shorten the time we would be apart. I was going to get my car back on the road no matter what. Then I met a girl……….
One of my very best friends was a girl named Margaret. She knew how much I loved my car, my best friend Gary and just being me, unapologetic “me”. She, as if by magic, became the last girlfriend I’d ever have. She loved me, she appreciated and accepted my love of cars and specifically my Chevelle. The only problem was that her mom did not like my car and, I believe with my whole heart, prayed my car broken. Yep! She did not like her daughter being driven around in a car that fast so her way of fixing that was to pray that God would keep it from running. Judy won and the car was parked.
Well, life happened and being a grownup took precedence over my childhood desires. I took jobs outside of the sawmill and worked my tail off to make something of myself and provide for my family. Skip ahead about 20 years and I finally have gotten to a spot where I can buy myself another hot rod, the goal that I’ve always had in my heart since the day I had to sell the Chevelle.
The car….
I’m a Chevy guy, always have, always will be but I will consider other GM products, say, Cadillac….. Don’t get me wrong, we own or have owned BMW’s, Mazda’s, Toyota’s etc but never Ford’s (just had to get that in there). I had my eye on a new Cadillac CTS-V, so much so that I had a deal hammered out at the dealership and had to make the call to Margaret to sell her on the great deal I worked out. Well, as you might have guessed, that didn’t go so well and I left in the same car that I entered with. Margaret says to me the next day “have you given any consideration to a new Camaro?” I almost dismissed her as quickly as she got done saying it. The only thing worse than a Mustang is a Camaro and I don’t have a mullet anyway. A quick, incognito Google search revealed that the new Camaro’s have the same long block as the CTS-V, hmmmmmm. How much are these new Camaro’s? HALF what I was about to spend on the CTS-V?!?!? “Hey Margaret, why don’t we go over to Blade Chevrolet and take a look at a Camaro. You know, just see what they look like in person, what the seats feel like. Yeah, we walked out of there with a new set of keys.
I got a black on black 2SS/RS 6.2l 6 Speed Manual Transmission BAD ASS ground pounder and I couldn’t wait to figure out how to light those Pirelli P Zero’s up and leave my mark on every town in Skagit and Snohomish Counties just like I did in the Chevelle when I was a kid! I wrung my new new baby out like a good hot rodder should. I took her on a road trip to Route 66 with my daughter and made new memories with my daughter that we will have forever. It’s really amazing how our cars can be such an integral part of our histories. It was important to me to leave an indelible mark in my daughter’s memory and heart and my Camaro was a main character in that story.
One down side to how powerful this new breed of American Muscle is just how well they handle high speeds. I have hit well into the middle triple digits in my Camaro and not always on a racetrack. After some time on deserted high desert highways, I was infected with a new strain of speed influenza. You see, the Chevelle could go 100+ but only a ¼ mile at a time. The Camaro can go 100+ with the cruise control on and feel like it’s going 60. Well on our trip, my buddy in his Challenger and me in my Camaro were busting down I-10 headed toward Vegas and it was one of our many high speed passes, right up until the CHiP radared him at 105MPH (I’m not sure what my speed was and I wasn’t going to ask the trooper). Long story short, my friend ended up with about $1500 in fines and fees and we were done hitting triple digits on that trip.
OK, well what do I do now that I know the feeling of going triple digits but I don’t want a huge ticket, time in jail or worst case scenario, hurt someone. I remember seeing something on local TV about a road course program at Pacific Raceways (one of the places that this whole thing started). I looked it up, submitted the online form to learn more and within minutes I receive a call on my cell phone. “Hi, is this Ray? This is Don Kitch Jr with ProFormance and you submitted a form on our website. How can I help you?” “Wow, Don, thank you for calling me so quickly! Is that racecars I hear in the background? It’s raining here in Seattle, I don’t get it?” “I’m in Daytona practicing for the 24 Hours.” Thinking to myself “WHAT?!? I’m talking to someone who is going to race in the 24 Hours of Daytona??? Our lines must have gotten crossed somewhere! He’s gonna be ticked when he finds out that I’m just some chump wanting to drive fast around Pacific and not some racing big whig. “Uh, yeah, I saw something on your website about a Winter Driving Program????” Don replies with a full explanation of the program and almost sounds apologetic for calling me from the racetrack.
Needless to say I was at the next Winter Performance Driving Day (2/2/2013) with my buddy and his Challenger and it was like nothing I could have ever imagined. I was scared sh*tless of what they were going to have us do with our cars. Just how fast are they going to make us go?? What if they want me to go triple digits around this track? I’m not prepared to do that!! Our first lesson in the cars was a braking exercise. “You have to know how to slow down before you can go fast”. That makes sense and it’s not going 100 MPH so I’m good with that. After a few more exercises and a bunch of amazing wisdom from Don in the classroom we were cut loose, with very close supervision of the instructors, to go out on the track. Well, speed blindness and competitive spirits took over and the next thing I knew I was creeping into the triple digits in the front stretch and falling in love with the turns. I left that one day class feeling 10’ tall and bulletproof! “Use your powers for good, not evil Ray” I kept telling myself.
After that first day, I could not wait to get back to the track! Don had a program where I could get my sport driving license so I HAD TO GET THAT! Little did I know that this day would end badly but so wonderfully at the same time. I got to the track early, I love how a racetrack feels early in the morning; how alive and electric it feels but it is dead quiet. You know that in a matter of minutes it’s going to be loud and there will be cars screaming around the track and rumbling through the paddock but at that moment before it all starts, it is one of the most peaceful places on earth. It just feels good, it feels right.
My day started out with the Driver’s Meeting (how cool is it that I AM IN A DRIVERS MEETING?!?!) and then getting paired up with my certification instructor, Brent Jordan. We went out and completed the first session with the advanced group (WAIT A MINUTE!!! I’m in the Advanced Group?!?!) Brent gave me some great guidance, I got it on my GoPro so I can study it, it’s all good, can I go run with the beginners again?? Don comes out the paddock “OK Advanced Group, you’re up!” OK, here we go, just do what you know to do and you’ll be fine….. Start the car up and “ding ding ding…. Low oil pressure, turn off engine” comes up on my HUD. WHAT!?!?!??! It must be a computer thing, it’ll probably go away if I restart it. “Ding ding ding…..” NOOOOOO!!!! MY BABY!!!! NOOO!!!!! All those feelings I had when I damaged my Chevelle came rushing back, no flooding back. How could this be??!? I didn’t drive it hard, I didn’t redline it, what in the world is going on?? Well, I had it towed to the local Chevy Dealer and had to leave my baby at a shop that I did not know with a service writer I’ve never met.
Later that night my cell phone rings and it’s Don Kitch. “Don is calling me? The guy that runs ProFormance and drives at the 24 Hours of Daytona?? Why is Don calling me?” Don on the phone “Hey Ray, I was just thinking of you and wondering how you are doing and how your car is”. What?!?! Don Kitch cares about me and my car’s wellbeing?! Who is this guy?!? I’ve met very few men in my life like this, I must be missing something. Shortly after I get off the phone with Don, I get a text from Lonnie. Lonnie helped me digest all that was coming at me when the the part failed at the track, he actually calmed me down but he didn’t know that at the time. I figured that he forgot who I was the minute he saw the taillights on the tow truck but no, he identified with what I was going through and cared enough to check in on me and offer his assistance while I get this sorted out. WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?!?!
Well the Camaro is back on the road now and all is well. It’s time to pick up this track day thing and see where it goes. Lonnie invites me to park next to him in the paddock on track days. Don trades hundreds of emails and texts with me throughout the summer to help me understand this new world of performance driving. I somehow have stumbled into an amazing group of people and a hobby that I could have never dreamt up in a million years. Guys and gals that will talk you through every corner and straightaway to help you shave another second off of your lap time and then ask you about your family. Just amazing people! Oh yeah, did I mention that these amazing people drive amazing cars!?!? Talk about car porn! Ferrari’s and Porsche’s like you were walking on a new car lot. Red Italia’s, Blue California’s, GT3’s GT3RS’s, 911 Cup Cars, tuned to the max M3’s, CTS-V’s, Z06’s, ZR-1’s, you name it, it’s in the paddock and guy or gal that drives it is happy to talk to you about it and let you drool over it.
The good racer….
ProFormance offers a 2 day SCCA camp. The camp is a requirement if you plan on getting an SCCA license. I just completed this course. The first day of the camp was 10/2/2013, 8 months to the day from my first day at the track. I have run Pacific roughly 4 times in this 8 months, most of my track time has come at The Ridge Motorsports Park in Shelton. Day one of the camp is a lot of classroom time. Direct instruction from Don Kitch. Racing gold! Oh yeah, this is a RACING camp, were done talking about high performance driving and lapping days, we are only talking about racing. Door to door, pass where you can, be first, racing! We all drive the same spec school cars (Chevy Cobalt SS Coupes). Mine was one of two cars that the ABS was not functioning on. Day 1 is heavy on braking exercises and it is raining like crazy. One more thing, I have substantially less tread on my right front tire than the other guys and I haven’t driven a Front Wheel Drive car on a track in my life! This is going to be interesting. My first few attempts at the braking exercise were throwaways, just learning how much pressure I could apply to the pedal without locking it up and sliding. By the third attempt I had it pretty well figured out, not perfected but figured out. I pulled up to Brent who was assessing our braking and he asked me how fast I was going when I entered the gate. “50, like we’re supposed to” was my answer. “Ray, you stopped there without ABS and the guys that have ABS are stopping way down there (pointing another 30’ or so down the track)”. I responded in my usual cocky way “I’ll do better next time.” Yep, I blew it and ended up 60’ past where the other guys were stopping…… “Lots to work on here ol’ RY”, I tell myself.
Now it’s time for some lapping with our coaches. Manfred is my coach and I’ve not met him until today. I know Ted, Brent and Kevin and they know me but Manfred and I have no idea what to expect from each other. After the first few laps Manfred, like the other instructors to this point, suggest, “maybe we should get you a car that has ABS.” “No, I’d really like to get this figured out with this car as it is. I can do it”. Manfred relents and continues to pucker at every corner entry. I’m coming in hot and wagging the tail of that Cobalt into every corner. Manfred starts to look a lot more comfortable and then shocked me when he said “I think you have some more speed there, you can brake later”. WHAT?!?!? Just two laps ago, this guy was suggesting I get a car that can stop better and now he’s telling me to go faster and brake later?!? Rock and roll! Let’s get some and see what we can do!
There was some discussion between the instructors just before one of the sessions and I hear Manfred positioning to keep his guys! I find out later that the instructors have a little side competition around who’s students do the best and win the race so it makes me feel good that the guy I just met a few hours ago is now fighting to keep me on his team. The end of day one is a qualifying and segment timing session. Well ol’ RY did pretty darn good. P1 and 3 fastest segments, I’m feeling pretty darn good. I came into this thing hoping I could hold my own and even considering sandbagging the entire two days just to be safe and not end up buying a school car due to wrecking it. Well that went out the door pretty quickly. I went to the hotel for the night feeling good about where I was in the unofficial competition but I slept like crap. Tossing and turning, dreaming about every corner and straightaway from the day and what I needed to to do improve it and then worrying about the race that ends the camp on day 2.
The first question Don asks us on day 2 is “How’d you sleep?”. I chimed in first; “Like crap!” The other guys in class all agreed, we all slept like crap when we expected to sleep like logs after such an exhausting day. Don knew that was going to be our response because he knew what was going through our minds and he gave us great council on how to manage that on race weekend. One of our sessions on day 2 was a passing drill. We were paired up with one other car and instructed on how and where to pass. I was paired up with Fred; Fred is a regular with the ProFormance group and is heck of a nice guy. He loves the competition and when you push him to improve because you are faster in a segment than he might be. I was behind Fred coming out of 3b and I noticed that he did not have a great line in that section of the track. My first thought was, “What are you doing over there Fred?”. My next thought was “drive his line when he’s behind you next lap so that you don’t teach him the faster line and definitely do not show him your secret in 5b! Well we finished our time doing the passing drills and Fred comes up to me and the first thing he says is “you showed me a whole new way to go through 5a and 5b! I can’t figure out how you are getting to the throttle so early!” DANG! He got one of my tricks but not the 2 that I was trying to keep from him! Fred was one of the fastest guys in the class and I needed to keep every 10th of a second from him that I could! (Click here to see our passing drill)
Now it’s time to actually qualify for the race! We will be timed in the segments and our best lap will determine our starting position. Can you guess what happened? I was going to improve on my effort from the day before. I knew that I would be P1 again! Well guess what, P4 and not one segment won! “WTF RY?!?! How did you tank qualifying?!?! (Click here to see my qualifying session) You were the class of the field yesterday and you thought you had this session in the bag! You didn’t make one mistake on either lap, didn’t leave 1 10th on the track but you came in 4th!?!?” Lots of self talk going on; so much that I couldn’t hear what anyone else was saying to me. “OK, it’s race time and this sh*t is getting real. Everyone improved more than you did from day 1 to 2 RY, it’s time to introduce “you” into the mix and make it all better or stink up the place and leave with your tail between your legs.”
I start the race mid-pack, we get the green light and there are cars in front of me, behind me and to my side. There’s nowhere to go but around the guys infront of me and get away! I have a plan to be in P1 by the end of turn 2. Well that worked about half as well as I had planned as I exited turn 2 in P2. OK, I got this guy! He’s going to lay down as soon as he sees me in his passenger side mirror and I’ll walk by on the inside. Wait a minute, he didn’t lay down!! He was supposed to lay down!! Did he not get the memo that I am faster than he is and he needs to protect himself and just let me by?? OK, well, I’ll get him at the entry of 8, I own 8 and he doesn’t have a chance. OK, well, that didn’t work either dangit! OK, get back on the school line RY and beat him with sheer speed instead of intimidation. I’m following him and outpacing him in every corner and straight but he’s not giving me a window. Here comes 8 and 9, you are fast here RY, do what you do and see what happens in the front stretch, be ready to pass him where he’s not been taught to expect it. We come out of 9 and I am smelling his exhaust I’m so close to him. I’M DRAFTING!!! I AM DALE FRIKIN EARNHARDT AND I AM DRAFTING!!! In that instant, that split second I had the greatest moment of clarity in my life, right there exiting turn 9 it came to me. “You know what to do RY, you have studied every second of every race that you have watched in the last 35 years, you have read racing books, you have spent hours in a classroom and with the ProFormance instructors in your car, and all of that studying is right here at the forefront of your mind now use it!!!” And as if I was shot out of a gun, I slingshoted P1 and rocketed to the front! I had him by 10 car lengths entering turn one and I was flat out! (I’m pretty sure that Don gave me a proud smile from the starters stand). There was no catching me! NOT TODAY GUYS!! NOT TODAY!!!! I was a God behind the wheel!! I hit every spot, I didn’t miss a braking point, I hit my turn ins and used up every inch of track!! I was digging and digging as if I was running for my life! I could have been racing to win the Daytona 500 and I couldn’t have gone a 10th faster. Well all that digging and did just that, it dug me into a hole. Guess what happens when you get too far ahead of the pack in a race at a racing school…….. Black flag! Bring ‘em in and shuffle the order…… DANG!! I WAS GODLIKE OUT HERE DON!! GODLIKE!! I knew it was coming but I hated to see it. OK, restart the race P4, time to pass some more guys, time to go to work RY! Except this time, these are different guys in front of me; HEY, that’s Fred up there!! Darnit, he’s going to use my tricks against me but I didn’t show him every trick in my bag! I got this! OK, P3 now and I’m one car away from Fred and we are exiting 3b, here we go! Well here’s the problem with being fast in 5a, 5b and 6, you really cannot pass there so it really doesn’t matter how many tricks you have in your bag but what it does do is make you bad fast in 6 and 7 and gives you so much entry speed into 8. I own 8, no one can wag the tail of their car into 8 like I can and I don’t have ABS! Well, Fred is no slouch and he’s not going to give me a fraction of an inch to pass him. That’s OK, I’ll measure him this lap and get him next time into 8, unless I get him in 2. Here we come to the start / finish line. What’s that sign say that Don’s holding up?! “LAST LAP”???? WHAT??? LAST LAP???? I need more time to….. Well I guess I don’t get that time, gotta make it happen here! Screw the line, screw the braking point, put it in there deep and pray that it all comes out ok! That last little part after the last lap sign, yeah, we were all thinking that and turn 2 was awash with Chevy Cobalts sliding sideways and clawing and scratching for that next position while trying to not hit another car or end up in the gravel or the wall and it all went to Hell. I passed someone, not Fred, but then someone went flying by me with all 4 tires smoking and sideways. I don’t remember the rest of that lap to be honest. I was just thankful to have survived turn 2, the fastest turn on the track and come in 3rd.
Don shared with us after the race and debrief, that it’s important to him to be known as a good driver. He wants to be known by his fellow competitors as a good driver. Someone that they can put their tires next to on the track and they know that he will race them well. He won’t wreck them but he will race them hard. Well Don, you are a good racer for another reason. You make us all believe that we can be good racers too. You believe in me so I believe in me. You see in me what I could not see in myself until you saw it. This has been one of the roughest summers of my life for a variety of reasons but you and our (I feel like I can call it “our”) racing family made this one of the best summers of my life regardless of the “downs” of this 8 months, lapping, learning, being welcomed and mentored has reignited in me what has been there ever since I was a little boy. I don’t care what my parents said, I can be a racer! Thank you Don and Donna Kitch for more than I can put into words (hard to believe, I know).


Ray York (AKA “RY”)

[PalmerGA]

I'm sure it's a good story but, sorry, too long for me. Glad you love cars & racing though.

[Goober]

Too long.

[CamaroTom]

Awesome story! Congratulations on the racing success! I can't wait until I get some track action with my 1LE!

[Linker239]

Awesome story! Great read!

[Supreme Leader]

Delete this thread. It talks about street racing.

Originally Posted by RayYork

One down side to how powerful this new breed of American Muscle is just how well they handle high speeds. I have hit well into the middle triple digits in my Camaro and not always on a racetrack. After some time on deserted high desert highways, I was infected with a new strain of speed influenza. You see, the Chevelle could go 100+ but only a ¼ mile at a time. The Camaro can go 100+ with the cruise control on and feel like it’s going 60. Well on our trip, my buddy in his Challenger and me in my Camaro were busting down I-10 headed toward Vegas and it was one of our many high speed passes, right up until the CHiP radared him at 105MPH (I’m not sure what my speed was and I wasn’t going to ask the trooper). Long story short, my friend ended up with about $1500 in fines and fees and we were done hitting triple digits on that trip.
OK, well what do I do now that I know the feeling of going triple digits but I don’t want a huge ticket, time in jail or worst case scenario, hurt someone.
Ray York (AKA “RY”)

[harryzhere]

Respect !!!

[2012-1822]

Wow you weren't kidding. I thought I made long posts.

[RayYork]

Originally Posted by Goober

Too long.

You saw "(long)" in the title, right?

[RayYork]

Originally Posted by 1LEMayhem

Awesome story! Congratulations on the racing success! I can't wait until I get some track action with my 1LE!

Thank you!! Hook up with your local track quickly! The 1LE is a monster on the track!

[RayYork]

Originally Posted by Linker239

Awesome story! Great read!

Thank you

[RayYork]

Originally Posted by harryzhere

Respect !!!

[RayYork]

Originally Posted by 2012-1822

Wow you weren't kidding. I thought I made long posts.

Think of how long it took to write!

[RayYork]

Originally Posted by Comrando

That was a great read.

Maybe you will be the next BS Levy.
The Last Open Road

Thank you! Wouldn't that be amazing!! Just wait until my first, non-school race! I'll have to start breaking it into chapters and include a TOC!