If someone had said I'd be racing 4 years ago, I'd have laughed my tail off, I'd have believed married with kids, living in Russia, working on a Salmon boat out of Alaska, that stuff I'd have bought but not racing. So I had this great car, an Acura Legend Coupe (Type II) and heard that Acura was coming out with the next generation of this car and I plunked my money down. So I took delivery of a black on black Acura CL Type S in March 2000. My good friend (who was driving an Integra Type R) told me that I had to check out this drivers school thing he had done on a real race track. Interesting I thought. I was a little worried about hurting the car (and owed money on it more importantly) but I went to a driver's school with the car, which couldn't have had more than 1000 miles on the odometer. Well, three drivers schools later as well as two sets of brake pads, one set of tires and a set of rotors later, I figured I better find a cheaper way to do this thing because the maintenance costs were wiping me out. I had just formed my own company that year and things were pretty good so I took my bonus and bought a pretty decent Porsche 944-S (the 16 valve) and after replacing pretty much everything that dry-rotted in its 6 years of stagnant garage life, took it to the track. Well, after a few events, I started looking into adding some rollover protection (rollbar/cage) and got a couple numbers from a friend. The first number (a Charlotte number) didn't get me far as I didn't get a call back from the guy so a day or so later, called the other number. At this number, I reached Walt Puckett at Delta Group Motorsports. After talking to him for no more than 10 minutes, I knew I trusted this guy to put in my rollbar. The car was done in a few weeks, seats and harnesses installed and I was rolling again. This was around April 2001 so I was about a year into my motorsports hobby.
Fast forward to October and I got this crazy idea that I wanted to step up again, this time to road racing. I heard about a couple of cars (SCCA ITA cars) in the Atlanta area and asked Walt what he knew about them. The one I settled on was a Honda CRX originally built by Louis Boustani and sold to another racer in the area. I picked it up in December of 2001 and Delta Group got a few things sorted so I could attend an SCCA licensing school in February 2002 at Roebling Road Raceway in Savannah, GA. Later that month, I went to a NASA competition licensing school as well and by mid-March, I had a provisional license to race with both organizations and had completed my first two Regional SCCA races at VIRginia International Raceway in Danville, VA. One of these races was a SARRC (sprint) race that I ran myself, the other was an ECR (endurance race) that Walt and I co-drove. A return trip to Roebling Road for a double ECR weekend and an ECR race at Carolina Motorsports Park in Kershaw, SC we were leading the 2002 ECR series. I ran three weekends in 2002 with NASA but had really dedicated the year by that May to trying to win the ECR with Walt's (and his wife Alycia's) huge help both driving and a lot of the other things I was clueless to in racing. One of the real nice and rewarding things was meeting the crew from OPM Motorsports who also was a huge part in the education of Adam and the countless answers and helping hands they gave me were tremendous. By the time August rolled around, one of our top competitors in the ECR series had moved on to other things so it was really a two team race. With wins at LMS (Lowes Motor Speedway) and VIR and second place finishes at Road Atlanta and CMP, we had won the the 2002 ECR Championship by 29 points.
Back up a few months though:
About a month before heading to LMS, which I was well informed was a track that we really would want an airdam, I
ordered an airdam/splitter from John Whittaker at Road Race Gear. I had met
John at the first Honda-Challenge race I attended and he really had me thinking about trying one (airdam/splitter) out. We did
win that race, sure was a nice way to break in a new product (and it really defined how the car would look from there on - having seen
it once since without the RRG package, it ain't my car).
Around this time, a friend had experienced a high speed off and it had rethinking what else I could be doing as far as safety
equipment. I got a number for Chris Wire at Race Car Engineering and was really impressed
at how helpful he was and what seemed like great deals on equipment for racers. During the conversation, I had told him my
interest in a head and neck restraint and he would tell me some information that I thought was super cool. He mentioned a
product in development that was using dampers (like small versions of the shocks on a car) to effect a similar result as the
head and neck restraints that used straps - but this product had an advantage, it couldn't really be worn wrong (so it took user
error out of the equation) and it really didn't play a restrictive role until it was called for. I filed the information away as I was
intending on making this change after the season. At this time we
also took out the aluminum race seat that was in the car and got a Momo Cup from
Louis at LTB Motorsports and
my back has thanked me (and LTBMotorsports) ever since. And again with this purchase as with Chris, Louis really made it
hard to think about buying a seat from anyone else.
Ok so now we're back to the timeline:
So I read on a messageboard about this new product on the market that uses dampers in conjunction with the harness as a head
and neck restraint. I contacted the poster (Gregg Baker - product developer) on
the messageboard and confirmed the ISAAC device was the product Chris had
eluded to a few months prior. Well, turned out that Gregg was going to be in Charlotte a few weeks from then and we met for lunch. He brought
a device, some crash test footage and some information on the product and much to my excitement, he offered me to try the
product. Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to do so for the ARRC and also unfortunately I turned my very trusty transmission into
what would become silver milk by lap 4 so things would have to wait a bit. I finally got to test the device out on track for the first
race of 2003 and man, I would not drive without it today - there is a confidence I have that I really don't know how to explain and
much to my delight, I don't even know I have it on until I return to the paddock. Part of this confidence came only hours after my first
session wearing the device. Although this wasn't by design, I managed to have my first impact with an immobile object the first
day I wore the device. And I, the guy who can get a neck-ache from a strong gust of wind, woke up the next day without any
soreness at all. Deal!
So Silver Milk??
Yeah so I "turned my very trusty transmission into what would become silver milk by lap 4" means something. I had a whizzing/slushing
sound coming out of the transmission (I'd learn that's where it was eminating by lap 4) and as the car seemed
weaker down the straights I thought about pulling into the pits. The lap I decided was time to do so, smoke began to flow into
the car in Turn 7. I pulled off at Turn 8 to watch the rest of the ARRC sprint race from the corner worker stand. Even putting the car on the
trailer I could smell this faint yet putrid smell (almost like a combination of sour milk and smelt). Well a month later when I took the transmission to see what we could salvage, when we opened the case, was what looked like silver milk (and smelled no better than something of that name). So I was standing at the Honda parts counter (Lapoint Honda in Charlotte - good guys) a few weeks later and when asked for my "team" name (they know about the race car) I said, "Sliver Milk Racing" and got a chuckle out of that. I kinda like the name - hopefully however may I NEVER smell that again.