celbritygocart

When a celebrity racing go-cart may as well have been a Ferrari Formula One car.

Here's a story that proves motorsport's technical folks are racers just as much as the drivers:

The scene:

The Championship Auto Racing Teams, or CART, race weekend at the now defunct Nazareth International Speedway, Nazareth, Pennsylvania in October, 1990.

What I was doing there:

Acting, and I do mean acting, as a crew guy for the Griffith Racing Cars team there to field several entries in the (Robert) Bosch Super Vee series race to be run in support of the featured CART Champ Car event.

Super what?

Formula Super Vee (commonly known simply as Super Vee) cars are open-wheel racers, in North America evolving in to what had become known for a short time as "Mini Indy" cars, eventually incorporating ground-effect aerodynamics and very much resembling CART Champ Cars of their time in appearance although somewhat smaller in size. While competitive Super Vee cars had all come to be powered by modified Volkswagen 1600cc in-line, four cylinder, liquid cooled engines, early Super Vee cars incorporated the old type Volkswagen opposed-four-cylinder, air-cooled "boxer" engines such as their Formula Vee ancestors (which still are all powered by the vintage boxer engines). Super Vee racers, however, had much more liberal engine, chassis, suspension and aerodynamic specification rules imposed upon them than Formula Vee cars.

Subsequent to formation of the Bosch Super Vee series the majority of North American professional Super Vee races were run in conjunction with CART events - even though the Bosch Super Vee series itself was sanctioned by the Pro Racing division of the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA). In its day the Bosch Super Vee series found its way very much as a training ground for drivers and teams to prepare for competing in the premiere CART Champ Car series. As an aside 1990, the year this story took place, was to be the final season for the Bosch Super Vee series.

The set-up to the story:

The CART Champ Car feature race was set to run on Nazareth's one-mile oval the Sunday of the event weekend. A special celebrity race had been organized to be run on that Saturday, the same day as our Super Vee race. The celebrity race, which I believe had been backed by the Robert Bosch organization, consisted of local celebs such as media personalities and other well known folks from the region around Nazareth in east-central Pennsylvania.

These celebrities were not to drive all-out racing cars but recreational type go-carts fitted with four-stroke lawn mower engines and fiberglass bodies intended to somewhat resemble a CART Champ Car. (I'm careful to point out that the celebrity "race cars" were based on recreational go-carts because there are many types of competition go-carts, or karts, that are true racing machines capable of very high performance.) By design these celebrity race cars were meant to not let their drivers get in to too much trouble.

Near the time of Saturday's celebrity race the event organizers proceeded to start the engines on all of their replica race cars to get them ready for the big event. Apparently one refused to fire-up because as I was helping check over our Super Vee cars for their upcoming competition a celebrity racer suddenly materialized in our paddock area sporting an engine that wouldn't start.

(I actually never found out just why the little celeb racer ended up at our particular space in the paddock.)

And the "thrash" begins:

No sooner had the celebrity racer appeared at our "door" then -- (1) Jim Griffith, our team manager and then-owner of Griffith Racing Cars (and current co-owner of Polestar Racing Group ), (2) Bertil Sollenskog, owner of Bertils Racing Engines, Volkswagen racing engine guru and the man who built any of the engines that were to be competitive in the Bosch Super Vee series and (3) the representative from Robert Bosch providing technical support to the Super Vee teams -- had all swarmed around it in an attempt to get the little bugger to start.

(In reality, these were three of the most knowledgeable people on the planet regarding Super Vee cars getting set to coax this little celebrity race car replica to run ASAP.)

In a blur, I remember the faux Champ Car fiberglass body coming off the celeb racer as well as a bunch of pieces of its little engine. About all one could see was this Super Vee brain trust with arms flailing, and maybe a spark plug flying, in a furious attempt to start the stubborn escapee-from-a-lawn-mower engine.

That's where the title of this essay comes in: To look at these three guys thrashing about they might as well have been trying to coax a non-starting Ferrari Formula One car to life on the grid just prior to roll-off of the Italian Grand Prix at Monza. It didn't matter what sort of race was to be run, to them all that was important at the time was the situation of a driver being ready to compete in a race and their car failing to start.

Can't wrap it up without a conclusion:

As I recall, they did manage to get the errant celebrity racer's engine to start in time for its race and the event organizers were forever grateful.

To catch up on the latest Formula One news here's a handy link to the official Formula One Website: http://www.formula1.com/

Griffith Super Vee racing car

Driven by Timothy E. Bennett of the Cleveland, Ohio area in this 1989 photo, this is one of the Griffith Racing Super Vee cars that was present at the Nazareth race mentioned above (though this photograph was taken at a different racing facility, possibly Nelson Ledges in Ohio). This represents the final of several model versions of Super Vee race car designed and built by Jim Griffith in Twinsburg, Ohio.

Of particular note: Bosch Super Vee being a series in which cars built by British manufacturer Ralt became predominant, Griffith Racing Cars was among a very few US constructors of Super Vee machines -- and to this writer's knowledge the last American builder to field a newly designed car before the series' demise.

Dave Klein photograph with thanks to Timothy E. Bennett.

By DFH July, 2007.

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