Our photographer, Erin Trieb, just uploaded about 500 photos she took of us to her website; we’ll use a few of them in the article. Here’s how to see them:
1) Go to www.erintrieb.com.
2) Click on Private Galleries.
3) Enter Spirit for the login and Spirit for the password.
4) Pick Spirit Lemons Race.
5) Enjoy!
We’ve got an extra car for Sunday. I don’t know the make and model, but it’ll have a stick. It comes to us from the wonderful people at Motorsport Enterprises. So we’ll have the junker and this other car. Pat and I will work out how to get both there.
Now, about Sunday: We’ll start at 3:30 at the Ranch. Jack Pharr, the manager of the track, will be there, as will a professional driver. We’ll also have a couple of designers/photographers from Spirit there, Brody Price and Lauren Chesnutt. Look your best!
See you soon.
Pat asked me to get Sampson Racing Communications to agree to loan us their “Expert Package” radio system plus the crew package for free. They said, “Sure…except for the part that bolts into the helmets. Once you put those in, you can’t use them again. Each helmet setup will cost you $140.”
So, the question is, do we want to pay that?
Note for the hygenically minded: It’s not as nasty sharing helmets (from a radio perspective) as you might think: Sampson would give us sets of ear buds for each driver. That’s the part that actually goes in your ears.
Turns out that Matt and I have only one degree of separation (aside, of course, from Pat).
Spirit’s ad sales account manager for the Southeast, Erin Kavanagh, is Matt’s neighbor in Greensboro. Their kids swim together at the local pool.
Wild stuff.
At Pat’s prompting, I asked a company called Isaac Direct to loan us a head harness called, fittingly, the Isaac. It’s like a shock absorber that hooks to our helmets. We can turn our heads in normal situations, but if we crash, the device locks down. We need only one; it unhooks and stays in the car while we come and go.
Anyway, Greg Baker, the Isaac guy, agreed to the deal, and plans to ship me a medium sometime this week. He said he’d let us keep the Isaac if our camera donors gave us a dashboard camera that shows the driver. Apparently, the Isaac logo is prominent.
The good people at Motorsport Ranch–just up the street from Jesse’s place–have agreed to give us track time and driving instruction gratis.
The details: 3:30 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 15th.
We’ll need to bring the MR2 and another car with a stick shift to take out on the track. Why two cars? We’ll need two vehicles to accommodate all of the drivers.
Side note: Jack Pharr, the guy who runs Motorsports Ranch, will be one of our instructors. And he just might be competing against us in Houston. Intrigue!
This also means we really have to get cracking on the car.
Success!
One of my jobs was to find a sponsor for those stickers so our car will look like a TARP NASCAR. Today, Steve Brom of Doozywraps agreed to help us out. (Hat tip to Pat for pointing me in Doozywraps’ direction from the get-go.)
Specifically, I asked for two types of stickers:
1) Ones of logos of bailout companies–namely, Citigroup, Bank of America, AIG, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, General Motors, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, PNC Financial Services Group, U.S. Bancorp, GMAC Financial Services, Chrysler, Capital One Financial, American Express, and Bank of New York Mellon Corp.
2) Ones of the car’s number. In this case, that could be $700 Billion or $700,000,000,000. That, I think, adds up to $700 billion. Those stickers would go on the doors and the roof.
We should be able to get these by mid-February.
Pat tells you our team got in, and that’s true enough. But here’s a peek behind the scenes, to the true center of 24 Hours power. Behold this e-mail exchange between me and grand poobah Jay Lamm:
Brad here.
According to LeMons, this is the goal of the essay portion of the application: “Use this space to tell us why your team will be so much cooler than all those other lame-o’s who want the same spot on the grid.”
Working off of our TARP theme and everybody’s driving stories, I’ve come up with the following. Have at it. If you see a typo or an inaccuracy, tell me. If you think an example or turn of phrase is lame, say so. If you don’t like the whole thing, I can start over. But please fire away today, so we can send this in pronto.
Thanks! (ed.: essay text after the jump)
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